The Relation of the Rate of Growth to Diet

A Simple Time Weight Relation Observed in Well Nourished Rats

“…Log reciprocal plot of the growth of various rat colonies on diets optimal for growth. 1, Mendel and Hubbell, 1935;2, Smith and Bing, 1928-29;3, Maynard, 1930;4, Macy et al, 1927, group labelled "stock diet";5, Freudenberger albinos, 1932 ;6, Sperry and Stoyanoff, 1934, series III (detailed growth data kindly supplied by Dr. Sperry); 7, King, 1915;8, Donaldson et al, 1906;9 and 10, Evans, 1923-24, series I and II (circles are controls and crosses are pituitary injected); 11, Hart and Cole, 1939 (circles are controls, crosses are females repeatedly bred); 12, Freudenberger Long-Evans strain, 1932; 13, unpublished data on the growth of our colony of LongEvans rats in 1931 and 1932 on our regular stock diet.…”

“…Recent students of heterogony have tended to dismiss the parameter In C' in the heterogony equation as an unimportant, uninterpretable constant (Huxley, 1932;Needham, 1934), and have centered attention upon K', the proportionality constant relating the specific growth rates of the parts compared. Thus "the constant b [our C '] is of little biological significance, since it merely denotes the value of y [our W1] when x [our W~] is unity" (Needham, 1934).…”

“…Thus "the constant b [our C '] is of little biological significance, since it merely denotes the value of y [our W1] when x [our W~] is unity" (Needham, 1934). Now if we write this integration constant In C t in its most general form, we have…”