The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays Part 10

[1] In the relative food-supply at various periods of life the curvature is approximately determinable.

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one of the smaller mammals; and (3), the life-history of a cold blooded animal living to a great age; _e.g._ certain of the reptilia.

It is probable, that to conditions of structural development, under the influence of natural selection, the question of longer or shorter life is in a great degree referable. Thus, development along lines of large growth will tend to a slow rate of reproduction from the simple fact that unlimited energy to supply abundant reproduction is not procurable, whatever we may a.s.sume as to the strength or cunning exerted by the individual in its efforts to obtain its supplies. On the other hand, development along lines of small growth, in that reproduction is less costly, will probably lead to increased rate of reproduction. It is, in fact, matter of general observation that in the case of larger animals the rate of reproduction is generally slower than in the case of smaller animals. But the rate of reproduction might be expected to have an important influence in determining the particular periodicity of the organism. Were we to depict in the last diagram, on the same time-scale as Man, the vibrations of the smaller and shorter-lived living things, we would see but a straight line, save for secular variations in activity, representing the progress of the species in time: the tiny thrills of its units lost in comparison with the yet brief period of Man.

The interdependence of the rate of reproduction and

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the duration of the individual is, indeed, very probably revealed in the fact that short-lived animals most generally reproduce themselves rapidly and in great abundance, and vice versa. In many cases where this appears contradicted, it will be found that the young are exposed to such dangers that but few survive (_e.g._ many of the reptilia, etc.), and so the rate of reproduction is actually slow.

Death through the periodic rigour of the inanimate environment calls forth phenomena very different from death introduced or favoured by compet.i.tion. A multiplicity of effects simulative of death occur. Organisms will, for example, learn to meet very rigorous conditions if slowly introduced, and not permanent. A transitory period of want can be tided over by contrivance. The lily withdrawing its vital forces into the bulb, protected from the greatest extremity of rigour by seclusion in the Earth; the trance of the hibernating animal; are instances of such contrivances.

But there are organisms whose life-wave truly takes up the periodicity of the Earth in its...o...b..t. Thus the smaller animals and plants, possessing less resources in themselves, die at the approach of winter, propagating themselves by units which, whether egg or seed, undergo a period of quiescence during the season of want. In these quiescent units the energy of the organism is potential, and the time-energy function is in abeyance. This condition is, perhaps, foreshadowed in the encyst-

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ment of the amoeba in resistance to drought. In most cases of hibernation the time-energy function seems maintained at a loss of potential by the organism, a diminished vital consumption of energy being carried on at the expense of the stored energy of the tissues. So, too, even among the largest organisms there will be a diminution of activity periodically inspired by climatological conditions. Thus, wholly or in part, the activity of organisms is recurrently affected by the great energy--tides set up by the Earth's...o...b..tal motion.

{Fig. 6}

Similarly in the phenomenon of sleep the organism responds to the Earth's axial periodicity, for in the interval of night a period of impoverishment has to be endured. Thus the diurnal waves of energy also meet a response in the organism. These tides and waves of activity would appear as larger and smaller ripples

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on the life-curve of the organism. But in some, in which life and death are encompa.s.sed in a day, this would not be so; and for the annual among plants, the seed rest divides the waves with lines of no activity (Fig. 6).

Thus, finally, we regard the organism as a dynamic phenomenon pa.s.sing through periodic variations of intensity. The material systems concerned in the transfer of the energy rise, flourish, and fall in endless succession, like cities of ancient dynasties.

At points of similar phase upon the waves the rate of consumption of energy is approximately the same; the functions, too, which demand and expend the energy are of similar nature.

That the rhythm of these events is ultimately based on harmony in the configuration and motion of the molecules within the germ seems an unavoidable conclusion. In the life of the individual rhythmic dynamic phenomena reappear which in some cases have no longer a parallel in the external world, or under conditions when the individual is no longer influenced by these external conditions.,, In many cases the periodic phenomena ultimately die out under new influences, like the oscillations of a body in a viscous medium; in others when they seem to be more deeply rooted in physiological conditions they persist.

The "length of life is dependent upon the number

[1] The _Descent of Man._

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of generations of somatic cells which can succeed one another in the course of a single life, and furthermore the number as well as the duration of each single cell-generation is predestined in the germ itself."[1]

Only in the vague conception of a harmonising or formative structural influence derived from the germ, peris.h.i.+ng in each cell from internal causes, but handed from cell to cell till the formative influence itself degrades into molecular discords, does it seem possible to form any physical representation of the successive events of life. The degradation of the molecular formative influence might be supposed involved in its frequent transference according to some such dynamic actions as occur in inanimate nature. Thus, ultimately, to the waste within the cell, to the presence of a force r.e.t.a.r.dative of its perpetual harmonic motions, the death of the individual is to be ascribed. Perhaps in protoplasmic waste the existence of a universal death should be recognised. It is here we seem to touch inanimate nature; and we are led back to a former conclusion that the organism in its unconstrained state is to be regarded as a contrivance for evading the dynamic tendencies of actions in which lifeless matter partic.i.p.ates.[2]

[1] Weismann, _Life and Death; Biological Memoirs_, p. 146.

[2] In connection with the predestinating power and possible complexity of the germ, it is instructive to reflect on the very great molecular population of even the smallest spores--giving rise to very simple forms. Thus, the spores of the unicellular Schizomycetes are estimated to dimensions as low as 1/10,000 of a millimetre in diameter (Cornil et Babes, _Les Batteries_, 1. 37).

From Lord Kelvin's estimate of the number of molecules in water, comprised within the length of a wave-length of yellow light (_The Size of Atoms_, Proc. R. I., vol. x., p. 185) it is probable that such spores contain some 500,000 molecules, while one hundred molecules range along a diameter.

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THE NUMERICAL ABUNDANCE OF LIFE

We began by seeking in various manifestations of life a dynamic principle sufficiently comprehensive to embrace its very various phenomena. This, to all appearance, found, we have been led to regard life, to a great extent, as a periodic dynamic phenomenon.

Fundamentally, in that characteristic of the contrivance, which leads it to respond favourably to transfer of energy, its enormous extension is due. It is probable that to its instability its numerical abundance is to be traced--for this, necessitating the continual supply of all the parts already formed, renders large, undifferentiated growth, incompatible with the limited supplies of the environment. These are fundamental conditions of abundant life upon the Earth.

Although we recognise in the instability of living systems the underlying reason for their numerical abundance, secondary evolutionary causes are at work. The most important of these is the self-favouring nature of the phenomenon of reproduction. Thus there is a tendency not only to favour reproductiveness, but early reproductiveness, in the form of one prolific reproductive.

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act, after which the individual dies.[1] Hence the wavelength of the species diminishes, reproduction is more frequent, and correspondingly greater numbers come and go in an interval of time.

Another cause of the numerical abundance of life exists, as already stated, in the conditions of nourishment. Energy is more readily conveyed to the various parts of the smaller ma.s.s, and hence the lesser organisms will more actively functionate; and this, as being the urging dynamic att.i.tude, as well as that most generally favourable in the struggle, will multiply and favour such forms of life. On the other hand, however, these forms will have less resource within themselves, and less power of endurance, so that they are only suitable to fairly uniform conditions of supply; they cannot survive the long continued want of winter, and so we have the seasonal abundance of summer. Only the larger and more resistant organisms, whether animal or vegetable, will, in general, populate the Earth from year to year. From this we may conclude that, but for the seasonal energy-tides, the development of life upon the globe had gone along very different lines from those actually followed. It is, indeed, possible that the evolution of the larger organisms would not have occurred; there would have been no vacant place for their development, and a being so endowed as Man could hardly

[1] Weismann, _The Duration of Life._

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have been evolved. We may, too, apply this reasoning elsewhere, and regard as highly probable, that in worlds which are without seasonal influences, the higher developments of life have not appeared; except they have been evolved under other conditions, when they might for a period persist. We have, indeed, only to picture to ourselves what the consequence of a continuance of summer would be on insect life to arrive at an idea of the antagonistic influences obtaining in such worlds to the survival of larger organisms.

It appears that to the dynamic att.i.tude of life in the first place, and secondarily to the environmental conditions limiting undifferentiated growth, as well as to the action of heredity in transmitting the reproductive qualities of the parent to the offspring, the mult.i.tudes of the pines, and the hosts of ants, are to be ascribed. Other causes are very certainly at work, but these, I think, must remain primary causes.

We well know that the abundance of the ants and pines is not a t.i.the of the abundance around us visible and invisible. It is a vain endeavour to realise the countless numbers of our fellow-citizens upon the Earth; but, for our purpose, the restless ants, and the pines solemnly quiet in the suns.h.i.+ne, have served as types of animate things. In the pine the gates of the organic have been thrown open that the vivifying river of energy may flow in. The ants and the b.u.t.terflies sip for a brief moment of its waters, and again vanish into the

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inorganic: life, love and death encompa.s.sed in a day.

Whether the organism stands at rest and life comes to it on the material currents of the winds and waters, or in the vibratory energy of the aether; or, again, whether with restless craving it hurries. .h.i.ther and thither in search of it, matters nothing. The one principle--the accelerative law which is the law of the organic--urges all alike onward to development, reproduction and death. But although the individual dies death is not the end; for life is a rhythmic phenomenon. Through the pa.s.sing ages the waves of life persist: waves which change in their form and in the frequency to which they are attuned from one geologic period to the next, but which still ever persist and still ever increase.

And in the end the organism outlasts the generations of the hills.

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THE BRIGHT COLOURS OF ALPINE FLOWERS [1]

IT is admitted by all observers that many species of flowering plants growing on the higher alps of mountainous regions display a more vivid and richer colour in their bloom than is displayed in the same species growing in the valleys. That this is actually the case, and not merely an effect produced upon the observer by the scant foliage rendering the bloom more conspicuous, has been shown by comparative microscopic examination of the petals of species growing on the heights and in the valleys. Such examination has revealed that in many cases pigment granules are more numerous in the individuals growing at the higher alt.i.tudes.

The difference is specially marked in Myosotis sylvatica, Campanula rotundifolia, Ranunculus sylvaticus, Galium cruciatum, and others. It is less marked in the case of Thymus serpyllum and Geranium sylvatic.u.m; while in Rosa alpina and Erigeron alpinus no difference is observable.[2]

In the following cases a difference of intensity of colour is, according to Kerner ("Pflanzenleben," 11. 504), especially noticeable:-- _Agrostemma githago, Campanula

[1] _Proc. Royal Dublin Society_, 1893.

[2] G. Bonnier, quoted by De Varigny, _Experimental Evolution_, p. 55.

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pusilla, Dianthus inodorus (silvestris), Gypsophila repens, Lotus corniculatus, Saponaria ocymoides, Satureja hortensis, Taraxac.u.mm officinale, Vicia cracca, and Vicia sepium._

To my own observation this beautiful phenomenon has always appeared most obvious and impressive. It appears to have struck many unprofessional observers. Helmholtz offers the explanation that the vivid colours are the result of the brighter sunlight of the heights. It has been said, too, that they are the direct chemical effects of a more highly ozonized atmosphere. The latter explanation I am unable to refer to its author. The following pages contain a suggestion on the matter, which occurred to me while touring, along with Henry H. Dixon, in the Linthal district of Switzerland last summer.[1]