B. Lindsay

“ Meanwhile, it must not be forgotten that the theory of degeneracy has its cheerful aspect. It enables us to look at the offending fellow-creature who belongs to the criminal classes, as an incomplete development rather than as a hardened sinner. It reminds us, too, that the criminal and the idler of to-day are now, what in the times of savagery and animalism, every man once was. The degenerate criminal, in fact, stands as a landmark, to point out the progress which has been made by the human race. ”

“ For the microscope alone has made it possible for men of science to study the world of living things. This is the value of honest and thorough work in almost every department of intellectual labour; that it builds a firm and sure though perhaps hidden foundation for the loftier and more perfect work of after days.
The microscope has shown us the intimate structure of every organ of the animal body ”

“ Instead of a fairy, you may be well contented to meet a dragon-fly with shining wings; instead of an ogre you will find the fierce spider, which not only makes away with every harmless fly that blunders into her net, but in many cases destroys her own kind also. Many a plant may be met with which has its own special caterpillar or other dependent insect, with ways of its own, which may amuse your idle hours. As for the change of a caterpillar or a tadpole into its adult form, it would be taken for a miracle if it were observed for the first time. ”

“ The harmony of colour and beauty of form in our native plants, and in the common flowers of cottage gardens, were imperceptible to their unobservant eyes. Their intelligence was on a level with that of the savage, who is impressed by new and striking objects, and delighted by gaudy colours, but finds no beauty in wild nature or in accustomed things. These people were typical specimens of the degenerate of the book-reading classes; dull of understanding and wanting in taste, as the result of mental overwork in several successive generations ”

“ It is worthy of remark that in the kindred Edible Periwinkle, Littorina littorea, which has a sharp spire, elderly specimens may be seen with the end of the spire damaged.
Turn again for a moment to our first instance—the adaptation of men to a sedentary or an outdoor occupation. Here we dwelt upon the change produced by their mode of life; we left out of sight the "survival of the fittest." Yet here it is equally surely at work. How often does the young mountaineer, less agile than his fellows, come by a violent death? ”

“ The Hydra is so small an animal that it appears to the unaided eye merely as a tiny speck. It may be found anywhere in British ponds and ditches, standing on water-weeds. Like the Sea-Anemone it preys on animals smaller than itself. Nature has provided it with minute stinging cells, which benumb its prey; and in this all the animals of the Cœlenterate group resemble it.
One of the most curious things about the Hydra is, that it often throws out buds. It can, of course, produce eggs which are fertilized and hatched in the usual way of eggs; the buds are an additional way of multiplying itself. ”

“ How greedy it often is! How readily it snatches that which does not belong to it! How quick it is to quarrel with its playmates, and to fight! How noisy when at play! How cross when it meets with disappointment! ”

“ Among a host of animals that present so many differences, how do we determine what shall be considered as belonging to one and the same kind? This is a point that nature usually settles thus. If two varieties when mated produce offspring which are perfectly fertile when mated again with another set of offspring similarly produced, then the two varieties, however differing in appearance, belong to one species. If on the other hand, the two belong to a different species, the offspring will be what is called a mule or hybrid, and will not produce offspring if mated with another mule. ”

“ To criticise the doing of that which he can by no means do; to destroy that which he can by no means make; to leave no margin of leniency in his judgment, for the imperfections which disfigure all human work: these are the familiar failings of youth, of the unripe mind. ”

“ But for all healthy people accustomed to the outdoor world, the study of animal life has always possessed an interest. Its interest has, however, been increased a hundred fold by the progress of modern discovery, which has taught us to see in the animal kingdom one large family, working its way upwards from humble beginnings, to more perfect structure of body, and more complete intelligence of mind. ”

“ Let us now pause a moment to consider how large a number of different industries profit by the labour of the zoologist. First there is the shipping trade; for, of course, all specimens from foreign lands are brought by sea. The chemist supplies preservative substances, and reagents used in the preparation of objects for the microscope. The construction of microscopes is a profession in itself, and one which employs many industries; for the making of a microscope includes not only the work of the optician, but also that of the artificer in brass, and of many other handicraftsmen. ”

“ There are several common kinds found on our English shores, and sometimes they appear in such numbers, hopping above sand or seaweed left by the tide, that they seem to form a sort of cloud, every unit of which, however, is but in the air an instant, falling and giving place to some other, while it prepares for a fresh hop. ”

“ Few, however, of all the many pupils who crowd the lecture room of the zoologist, will ever become zoologists themselves. A vast proportion of them are students of medicine, of whom some knowledge of the subject is required. Others are preparing to be schoolmasters or schoolmistresses, and seek just such an amount of knowledge as they expect to find useful in teaching pupils of their own. To the students who are preparing to be doctors or teachers, circumstances often assign a limit—"thus far and no farther"—when they would fain bring their knowledge to a higher standard. ”

“ How different is the state of knowledge now, when every part of a crocodile or a cockroach is described in print in the minutest detail, and set before even the beginner in zoology as a necessary lesson.
But in spite of the labour necessary to master such detailed lessons, the study of the animal world is far from prosaic. The Story of Animal Life, indeed, bids fair to be the only element of romance left in the modern world for those who stay at home in their own land. ”

“ But this is not all that is to be said about the protective colouring of this little shell-fish. There are many creatures whose young live at the surface of the sea, and afterwards migrate to deeper water as they attain adult age. In early life they are transparent, because thus they best escape notice in the clear water of the surface, especially when seen from below, by the many enemies on the watch to devour them. But in their later life they become opaque, because thus they best escape notice from enemies watching from above, as they crawl along the bottom of the sea. ”

“ The preservation and cataloguing of zoological literature is obviously a task all the more important, because, as we have already stated, zoological writings are not regulated by the law of supply and demand. A very little paper, read to a very small meeting of a learned society, [189] and wholly ignored by the world at large, may contain facts priceless to the world of science. It is on the accurate and painstaking work of the librarian, who preserves and catalogues small things as conscientiously as large ones, that we rely for the completeness of our record of zoological knowledge. ”

“ If he now revives an out-of-date pattern of goods, for the sole sake of change, this is Degeneracy. But where, on the contrary, competition is dull, the same firm will turn out the same goods for a long period of time. There is an optimum in trade competition: a reasonable [29] competition results in the production of sensible novelties, and consequent progress; but competition over-keen results in the production of rubbish, leading to eventual failure. So in the world of animal life; a certain degree of struggle for existence results in variation, establishment of new varieties, progress. ”

“ There are terrestrial forms among the lowest worms, at least forms that live in earth that is damp; but the earthworm is in the strictest sense a terrestrial animal. Darwin showed that it not only dwells in the soil, but is in a sense the manufacturer of soil, since the fertility of the earth depends greatly upon the work of earthworms. They pass the soil through their bodies, digesting the organic particles they find in it, and thereby loosen the soil, reduce it to a state of fine division, and render it more fit to support the growth of plants. ”

“ She is an impostor; but her instinct for weaving yarns is that of the savage, who is the more admired by his fellows the more he can show himself a liar. Even the dangerous criminal, such as the Anarchist assassin, is comparable with the treacherous savage, who stabs his guest, and with the fierce animal that bites the hand that feeds it. ”

“ On land, we see among the insects innumerable forms which present a metallic lustre, the beetles being the most notable in this respect. To return to the vertebrates, from which we started, everybody must have noticed that the fur of a clean well-kept black cat, when lit up by the bright sunlight in which the animal loves to bask, shows little rainbow reflections of red and green. ”

“ It is a matter of every-day knowledge that in some animals the young form presents an appearance and structure very different from that of the grown-up form, and adapted for a different mode of life; the commonest instances are the caterpillar of the butterfly and the tadpole of the frog. We are apt to think of these creatures as somewhat exceptional in this respect. But the zoologist, in viewing the whole range of the animal kingdom, finds a vast number of animals with larvæ, differing much from the [42] adult, and adapted for a different mode of life. ”

“ How fond of tawdry things! In all these qualities we see the history of the race, repeating itself in the life of the individual. The savage has preceded the civilised family—the child shows us the faults of a lower race. ”

“ The scientist, like the cook, must "first catch his hare" before any further details of work can be arranged. He does not, as a rule, do this in person, except when an animal of unusual interest is concerned. An army of collectors, all the world over, are constantly busy in searching for material for the zoologists, on land and sea. They look for employment and pay to the museums and laboratories of the learned world. When the specimens arrive, what is to be done with them? Some arrive alive, and may be dismissed from present consideration. ”

“ The shell is pierced by what look like hundreds of minute pin-holes, arranged in a complicated pattern; these are the holes through which it pokes its feet, which greatly resemble those of a Star-fish, being white suckers with a disc at the end. When thrown out to their full length they are, however, much longer than those of the Starfish, for they are naturally obliged to be thrown out to a distance longer than the length of the animal's own prickles. When moored by all its feet, extended from all sides of the shelly ball, the animal presents a curious and pretty sight. ”

“ But the eggs of this jelly-fish do not produce jelly-fishes: they produce a more or less Hydra-like animal which gives rise by budding to a fresh colony. This is what is known to Zoologists as "alternation of generations."
Now comes a puzzling question—Which part of this family group shall we select and call it an "animal"? Is each Hydroid of the colony an animal, and the jelly-fish another animal? Zoologists say "No": from the development of one egg, to the production of another, is the cycle that constitutes an individual animal. ”

“ It is therefore unnecessary to say much in this volume regarding the distribution of animal life. A table is, however, appended, which is not without interest. It shows how the chief great groups of animals are divided between land life and water life, whether in fresh water or salt. It will be seen that the terrestrial animals are much in a minority, and that they belong, for the most part, to the higher types. They are, in fact, stragglers, bold emigrants from the early home of animal life, which lies in the more shallow parts of the waters of the sea. ”

“ The bee-grub differs from the caterpillar in its comparative helplessness. It is fed like a child by the worker bees, which are undeveloped females; and it does not [92] leave the cell in which the egg is originally placed until it is ready to take on the adult form. The metamorphosis is complete; that is to say there is a grub stage and a pupa stage before the adult stage. There are three kinds of bees—the workers, which are sexless; the drones, which are males, and the queen, who is the sole female of the hive. ”

“ The earlier opticians who toiled, one after another, to bring the microscope to perfection, never dreamed, in their most ambitious moments, of the value of the gift that their labour was to confer upon mankind. ”

“ But how do we know when a number of animals are all of one kind? No two individual animals are ever exactly alike, any more than two persons are ever exactly alike. "It is a matter of common observation that no two individuals of a species are ever exactly alike; two tabby cats, for instance, however they may resemble one another in the general characters of their colour and markings, invariably present differences in detail by which they can be readily distinguished. Individual variations of this kind are of universal occurrence" (T. J. Parker) . ”

“ Look for them in pools towards low-tide mark; if uncovered by the water, they will be found with the arms drawn in, so that the animal looks merely like a small round knob of shiny opaque coloured jelly; if covered by the water, they will usually be found open, that is to say, with the arms (often called Tentacles) spread out. In the middle of the circle of arms is the mouth; and the apparent "flower" possesses an excellent appetite, as will readily be seen if any unfortunate little shrimp or sea-snail should come within reach of the arms. ”

“ Some live in the gill-chambers of a fish, some on, or even embedded in the skin.
[79] Among the most curiously modified forms of the Crustacea are the Barnacles or Cirripedia. These creatures, like the sponges, have a free-swimming larvæ, which eventually fixes itself by its anterior end, so that the adult animal passes its existence upside down. The young is an ordinary little creature with jointed legs, but the adult protects itself by a strange armour of shell. An intermediate stage exists in which the creature eats no food; it has therefore been compared with the chrysalis of insects. ”

“ Now protection from foes below is what the yellow periwinkle needs most: for fishes are quite ready to swallow it whole, and are not in any way deterred by the thickness of the shell, which is (by-the-way) in a measure a protection against birds when the tide is out; fishes habitually swallow shell-fish whole, although the inmate only is digested. The bright yellow, then, that seems to us so conspicuous, is probably a good means of hiding for the periwinkle when under water. Its common variations in colour, too, are probably protective in their use: some are a dull purplish brown, some drab. ”