Publisher's Synopsis
From the TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
Rignano is a student of Biology who has also the training of an engineer and physicist. His attack on biological problems is from that side. In this book he offers an explanation on a physical basis of assimilation, cell division, and the biogenetic law of recapitulation in ontogeny, and he suggests a mechanism whereby the inheritance of acquired characters may be effected.
Such a study of the most fundamental and difficult of biological problems cannot fail to be of the greatest interest to all students of science. It points out a way to the understanding of the essential nature of living matter. Therefore the translator has gladly consented to prepare for publication this translation first made for his own satisfaction. It has been revised by the author.
-Basil Harvey, University of Chicago, 1911.
