Radiata

“ To this category belong the pure Miocene Polycystine marls of Barbados (§ 246) , the Tertiary Polycystine clay of the Nicobar Islands (§ 247) , and the Polycystine quartz of the Jura (§ 248) . All these pure Radiolarian rocks may be regarded as fossil Radiolarian ooze (§ 237) , and are certainly of deep-sea origin, having probably been deposited at depths greater than 2000 fathoms. Their palæontological character also is in favour of this view, for the abyssal Osculosa (§ 235) are more abundant and richer in species than the pelagic Porulosa (§ 233) . ”

“ The palæontology of the Radiolaria has of late made important and interesting advances. Until ten years ago fossil remains of this class were known exclusively from the Tertiary period; almost the only source of our information was to be found in the researches of Ehrenberg, commenced in 1838, continued in his Mikrogeologie in 1854, and concluded in his last work (L. N. 25) published in 1875 (compare L. N. 16, pp. 3-9, 191-193) . In the year 1876 a number of Mesozoic Radiolaria from the chalk were described by Zittel (L. N. 28) , and afterwards others from the Jura by Dunikowski (L. N. 44) . ”

“ Moreover, the fossil Radiolaria hitherto known have been found only in very circumscribed and widely separated localities. The majority of all the species belong to the small island of Barbados. Although our palæontological acquaintance with the Radiolaria must necessarily be incomplete for this reason, it is still more so since at least thirty out of the eighty-five families (that is more than a third) could not possibly leave any fossil remains, either because they possess no skeleton, or because of its chemical composition. ”

“ But we must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity. ”

“ Radium covers an equal distance while we pronounce its name. One and one-quarter seconds, and twenty-five thousand miles are traversed. Puck promises to put his "girdle round the earth in forty minutes." Radium would pass the fairy girdlist in the spin round sixteen hundred times. Thus truth, as it is being evolved in our day, becomes stranger than the wildest imaginings of fiction. ”

“ But the principle of radiation on which the whole branch of Radiates is constructed controls the organization of Acalephs no less than that of the other classes, so that a transverse section across any Polyp (Fig. 1) , or across any Acaleph (Fig. 50) , or across any Echinoderm (Fig. 140) , shows their internal structure to be based upon a radiation of all parts from the centre to the periphery. ”

“ Cavor's search was a substance that should be "opaque"—he used some other word I have forgotten, but "opaque" conveys the idea—to "all forms of radiant energy." "Radiant energy," he made me understand, was anything like light or heat or those Röntgen rays there was so much talk about a year or so ago, or the electric waves of Marconi, or gravitation. All these things, he said, radiate from centres and act on bodies at a distance, whence comes the term "radiant energy." Now almost all substances are opaque to some form or other of radiant energy. ”

“ I allude to the discovery of radium by Madame Curie of Paris.
Radium has recently upset our most cherished theories of matter and force. The whole subject of chemistry has to be rewritten and our ideas of the constitution of matter entirely changed. Here is a substance which emits light and heat and electricity continuously without any apparent source of supply. It emits light in the dark, and in a cool room maintains itself constantly at a higher temperature than its environment. ”

“ In general the Radiolaria seem to be sensitive to the following stimuli; (1) pressure (see note B) ; (2) temperature (see note C) ; (3) light (see note D) ; (4) chemical composition of the sea-water (see note E) . The reaction towards these stimuli, corresponding to the sensation of pleasure or dislike which they call forth, is shown in various forms of motion of the protoplasm, changes in the currents in it, contraction of the central capsule, changes in the size, position, and form of the pseudopodia, changes in the volume of the calymma (by the evocation of water) , &c. ”

“ By all the laws of human nature and its greed for the precious, Sands and I should have danced around the radium pool with glee over our discovery. Untold wealth lay exposed before us, but under the sadness of our circumstances, the living, pulsating pool was nothing. The radium, which we believed oozed out of the old volcanic crater, could ruin the world, with its great power and radio-active qualities. ”

“ In spite of the rapid change he was going through, the greenish hue remained to mar his features with a ghastly pallor caused, no doubt, by the radio-active power of the radium. As for myself, I could feel no change in my physical being. I wondered if the great radium deposit was to blame. I knew that science held transmutation of elements possible and has even accomplished it in a small way and that radium itself is the product of disintegration of uranium and ionium. ”

“ These coincidences are still more striking among living animals, where they can be more readily and fully traced, and often give us a key to their relative standing, which our knowledge of their anatomical structure fails to furnish. This is perhaps nowhere more distinctly seen than in the type of Radiates, where the Acalephs in their first stages of growth, that is, in their Hydroid condition, remind us of the adult forms among Polyps, showing the structural rank of the Acalephs to be the highest, since they pass beyond a stage which is permanent with the Polyps ”

“ I was confoundedly excited; there were a hundred things to be thought about; clamouring to be thought about; out-clamouring the re-current chimes of some near clock. I began to read the article by Radet in the Revue Rouge—the one I had bought of the old woman in the kiosque. It upset me a good deal—that article. It gave away the whole Greenland show so completely that the ecstatic bosh I had just despatched to the Hour seemed impossible. I suppose the good Radet had his axe to grind—just as I had had to grind the State Founder's, but Radet's axe didn't show. ”

“ From these true abyssal Radiolaria must be carefully distinguished those species whose empty skeletons, devoid of all soft parts, occur also in the Radiolarian ooze of the deep-sea, but are clearly only the sunken remains of dead forms, which have lived at the surface or in some of the upper zones. ”

“ The number of the inquiline Xanthellæ is so variable even in one and the same species of Radiolaria, that they do not appear to be exactly essential to its welfare; and in many species they are entirely wanting. Their significance is questionable in the case of those numerous deep-sea Radiolaria which live in complete darkness, and in which, therefore, the Xanthellæ, even if present, could excrete no oxygen on account of the want of light. ”

“ This document read:
"In the event of my death I give to the Institut du Radium, of Paris, for exclusive use in the Laboratoire Curie, the gramme of radium which was given to me by the Executive Committee of Women of the Marie Curie Radium Fund, pursuant to an agreement dated the 19th day of May, 1921."
This act was consistent with the whole life of the discoverer of radium; with the answer she had made to my question a year before:
"Radium is not to enrich any one. It is an element; it is for all people." ”

“ The first step is to obtain the radula. Dissection is easy in species of a reasonable size. On opening the head from above, so as to lay open the floor of the mouth, the radula itself is seen in most of the marine species, though in others it is contained in a sort of proboscis; and in the Pulmonata and others the student will find the buccal mass, with commonly a brown mandible at its front end, and the lingual ribbon in its hinder part. ”

“ Several have as their aim the study of the emanation, that strange gaseous body that radium produces and which is largely responsible for the intense radiation commonly attributed to the radium itself. Pierre Curie demonstrated by a searching examination the rigorous and invariable law according to which the emanation destroys itself, no matter what the conditions are in which it finds itself. To-day the emanation of radium, harvested in tiny phials, is commonly employed by physicians as a therapeutic agent. ”

“ However, I have reasons to believe that some of the Jovians were destroyed by the peculiar atmosphere of this earth when they arrived here. Naturally they could not be accustomed to our atmospheric conditions and results were that only the fittest survived the rigors of an alien planet. We must consider that years must have been consumed before they actually succeeded in locating the underground source of the radium deposit. Those who were unable to keep up the strenuous pace, weighted down by the earth's own atmosphere, were quite naturally cast aside. ”

“ But the life and activity of radium is, from a geological standpoint, very brief. According to Professor Rutherford, and he is sustained by nearly all other physigists, radium is half consumed in a period of 1,300 years. In 13,000 years only the thousandth part of what now exists will be left, and in 26,000 years, only the millionth part will remain. Quite independently of geological reasons, the belief has been that radium is generated as the product of decay of some other element, and that the amount of it in nature is sensibly constant. It is generated as rapidly as it decays. ”

“ But in all these works we find only drawings and descriptions of the animals, without any attempt to classify them according to common structural features. In 1776, O. F. Müller, in a work on the marine and terrestrial faunæ of Denmark, gave some admirable figures of Radiates, several of which are identical with those found on our own coast. Cavolini also in his investigations on the lower marine animals of the Mediterranean, and Ellis in his work upon those of the British coast, did much during the latter half of the past century to enlarge our knowledge of them. ”

“ He stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning down at the dim steaming railway and the busy ironworks beyond, frowning as if he were thinking out some knotty problem.
Raut glanced at him and away again. "At present your moonlight effect is hardly ripe," he continued, looking upward; "the moon is still smothered by the vestiges of daylight."
Horrocks stared at him with the expression of a man who has suddenly awakened. "Vestiges of daylight? . . . Of course, of course." He too looked up at the moon, pale still in the midsummer sky. ”

“ It is natural to suppose that the numerous abyssal Radiolaria, discovered by the Challenger, which live at great depths (2000 to 4500 fathoms) in complete darkness, in icy cold and under an enormous pressure, must have quite different sensations of pleasure from their pelagic relatives which live at the surface of the sea under an equatorial sun. Karl Brandt has recently added much to our knowledge regarding the special action of different vital conditions upon the various Polycyttaria and the degrees of their irritability (L. N. 52, pp. 113-132) . ”

“ LATHAM. Why were not the S-Regions discovered long ago?
NIEMAND. Because the radio exploration of the Sun only began since the end of World War II.
LATHAM. How does it happen that you only got patients suffering from S-radiation since about 1955?
NIEMAND. I think we did get such patients previously but not in large enough numbers to attract attention. Also the present sunspot cycle started its rise to maximum about 1954.
LATHAM. Is there no way of escaping the S-radiation?
NIEMAND. I'm afraid the only sure way is to keep on the unilluminated side of the Earth which is rather difficult to do. ”

“ Science is, at this date, powerless to analyze or explain its marvellous power. The leading scientists of the world of learning—Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Professor Curie (who, with Mme. Curie, has the honor of being its discoverer) —believe that in radium will be found the true solution of the problem of matter. Radium gives off rays at the speed of one hundred and twenty thousand miles a second, and these rays offer the most extraordinary heat, light, and power. Yet with this immense radiation it suffers no diminution of energy ”

“ Now, the special interest of radium is in the intensity of its rays which is several million times greater than the uranium rays. And the effects of the rays make the radium so important. If we take a practical point of view, then the most important property of the rays is the production of physiological effects on the cells of the human organism. These effects may be used for the cure of several diseases. Good results have been obtained in many cases. What is considered particularly important is the treatment of cancer. ”

“ Then, looking towards the Radiant City and taking hold of the chain with his hand, Heman wrenched it apart and set the lad free.
"Come, my lad," he said, "come," and he began to move away at once. "We must not delay a moment in this Land. It infects those who linger within it with a sleeping sickness that once given way to is almost impossible to combat. Come lad with me and 'let thine eyes look right on and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.' Do you not see how the long grass is waving? Enemies are hiding within it ready to hurl their poisoned darts at you. ”