Chapter I (1)

Omnipresence of Life--The Microscope--An Opalina and its
wonders--The uses of Cilia--How our lungs are protected from
dust and filings--Feeding without a mouth or stomach--What is
an organ?--How a complex organism arises--Early stages of a
frog and a philosopher--How the plants feed--Parasites of the
frog--Metamorphoses and migrations of Parasites--Life within
life--The budding of animals--A steady bore--Philosophy of the
infinitely little.

Come with me, and lovingly study Nature, as she breathes, palpitates, and works under myriad forms of Life--forms unseen, unsuspected, or unheeded by the mass of ordinary men. Our course may be through park and meadow, garden and lane, over the swelling hills and spacious heaths, beside the running and sequestered streams, along the tawny coast, out on the dark and dangerous reefs, or under dripping caves and slippery ledges. It matters little where we go: everywhere--in the air above, the earth beneath, and waters under the earth--we are surrounded with Life. Avert your eyes awhile from our human world, with its ceaseless anxieties, its noble sorrow, poignant, yet sublime, of conscious imperfection aspiring to higher states, and contemplate the calmer activities of that other world with which we are so mysteriously related. I hear you exclaim,--

“The proper study of mankind is man;”

nor will I pretend, as some enthusiastic students seem to think, that

“The proper study of mankind is _cells_;”

but agreeing with you, that man is the noblest study, I would suggest that under the noblest there are other problems which we must not neglect. Man himself is imperfectly known, because the laws of universal Life are imperfectly known. His Life forms but one grand illustration of Biology--the science of Life,[21] as he forms but the apex of the animal world.

Our studies here will be of Life, and chiefly of those minuter, or obscurer forms, which seldom attract attention. In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is everywhere. Nature _lives_: every pore is bursting with Life; every death is only a new birth, every grave a cradle. And of this we know so little, think so little! Around us, above us, beneath us, that great mystic drama of creation is being enacted, and we will not even consent to be spectators! Unless animals are obviously useful, or obviously hurtful to us, we disregard them. Yet they are not alien, but akin. The Life that stirs within us, stirs within them. We are all “parts of one transcendent whole.” The scales fall from our eyes when we think of this; it is as if a new sense had been vouchsafed to us; and we learn to look at Nature with a more intimate and personal love.

Life everywhere! The air is crowded with birds--beautiful, tender, intelligent birds, to whom life is a song and a thrilling anxiety, the anxiety of love. The air is swarming with insects--those little animated miracles. The waters are peopled with innumerable forms, from the animalcule, so small that one hundred and fifty millions of them would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large that it seems an island as it sleeps upon the waves. The bed of the seas is alive with polypes, crabs, star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animalcules. The rugged face of rocks is scarred by the silent boring of soft creatures; and blackened with countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets.

Life everywhere! on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its chequered shade, we are saluted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts, all telling how populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree, or shrub, or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted glance detects a colony of various inhabitants. We pluck a flower, and in its bosom we see many a charming insect busy at its appointed labour. We pick up a fallen leaf, and if nothing is visible on it, there is probably the trace of an insect larva hidden in its tissue, and awaiting there development. The drop of dew upon this leaf will probably contain its animals, visible under the microscope. This same microscope reveals that the _blood-rain_ suddenly appearing on bread, and awakening superstitious terrors, is nothing but a collection of minute animals (_Monas prodigiosa_); and that the vast tracts of snow which are reddened in a single night, owe their colour to the marvellous rapidity in reproduction of a minute plant (_Protococcus nivalis_). The very mould which covers our cheese, our bread, our jam, or our ink, and disfigures our damp walls; is nothing but a collection of plants. The many-coloured fire which sparkles on the surface of a summer sea at night, as the vessel ploughs her way, or which drips from the oars in lines of jewelled light, is produced by millions of minute animals.

Nor does the vast procession end here. Our very mother-earth is formed of the débris of life. Plants and animals which have been, build up its solid fabric.[22] We dig downwards, thousands of feet below the surface, and discover with surprise the skeletons of strange, uncouth animals, which roamed the fens and struggled through the woods before man was. Our surprise is heightened when we learn that the very quarry itself is mainly composed of the skeletons of microscopic animals; the flints which grate beneath our carriage wheels are but the remains of countless skeletons. The Apennines and Cordilleras, the chalk cliffs so dear to homeward-nearing eyes--these are the pyramids of bygone generations of atomies. Ages ago, these tiny architects secreted the tiny shells, which were their palaces; from the ruins of these palaces we build our Parthenons, our St. Peters, and our Louvres. So revolves the luminous orb of Life! Generations follow generations; and the Present becomes the matrix of the Future, as the Past was of the Present: the Life of one epoch forming the prelude to a higher Life.

When we have thus ranged air, earth, and water, finding everywhere a prodigality of living forms, visible and invisible, it might seem as if the survey were complete. And yet it is not so. Life cradles within Life. The bodies of animals are little worlds, having their own animals and plants. A celebrated Frenchman has published a thick octavo volume devoted to the classification and description of “The Plants which grow on Men and Animals;”[23] and many Germans have described the immense variety of animals which grow on and in men and animals; so that science can now boast of a parasitic Flora and Fauna. In the fluids and tissues, in the eye, in the liver, in the stomach, in the brain, in the muscles, parasites are found; and these parasites have often _their_ parasites living in them!

We have thus taken a bird’s-eye view of the field in which we may labour. It is truly inexhaustible. We may begin where we please, we shall never come to an end; our curiosity will never slacken.

“And whosoe’er in youth
Has thro’ ambition of his soul given way
To such desires, and grasp’d at such delights,
Shall feel congenial stirrings, late and long.”

As a beginning, get a microscope. If you cannot borrow, boldly buy one. Few purchases will yield you so much pleasure; and while you are about it, do, if possible, get a good one. Spend as little money as you can on accessory apparatus and expensive fittings, but get a good stand and good glasses. Having got your instrument, bear in mind these two important trifles--work by daylight, seldom or never by lamplight; and keep the unoccupied eye _open_. With these precautions you may work daily for hours without serious fatigue to the eye.

Now where shall we begin? Anywhere will do. This dead frog, for example, that has already been made the subject of experiments, and is now awaiting the removal of its spinal cord, will serve us as a text from which profitable lessons may be drawn. We snip out a portion of its digestive tube, which from its emptiness seems to promise little; but a drop of the liquid we find in it is placed on a glass slide, covered with a small piece of very thin glass, and brought under the microscope. Now look. There are several things which might occupy your attention; but disregard them now to watch that animalcule which you observe swimming about. What is it? It is one of the largest of the Infusoria, and is named _Opalina_. When I call this an Infusorium I am using the language of text-books; but there seems to be a growing belief among zoologists that the Opalina is not an Infusorium, but the infantile condition of some worm (_Distoma_?). However, it will not grow into a mature worm as long as it inhabits the frog; it waits till some pike, or bird, has devoured the frog, and then, in the stomach of its new captor, it will develop into its mature form: then, and not till then. This surprises you? And well it may; but thereby hangs a tale, which to unfold--for the present, however, it must be postponed, because the Opalina itself needs all our notice.

A B

OPALINA RANARUM.

A Front view }
} Magnified.
B Side view }
]

Observe how transparent it is, and with what easy, undulating grace it swims about; yet this swimmer has no arms, no legs, no tail, no backbone to serve as a fulcrum to moving muscles: nay, it has no muscles to move with. ’Tis a creature of the most absolute abnegations: sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything;--no, not sans everything, for as we look attentively we see certain currents produced in the liquid, and on applying a higher magnifying power we detect how these currents are produced. All over the surface of the Opalina there are delicate hairs, in incessant vibration: these are the _cilia_.[24] They lash the water, and the animal is propelled by their strokes, as a galley by its hundred oars. This is your first sight of that ciliary action of which you have so often read, and which you will henceforth find performing some important service in almost every animal you examine. Sometimes the cilia act as instruments of locomotion; sometimes as instruments of respiration, by continually renewing the current of water; sometimes as the means of drawing in food--for which purpose they surround the mouth, and by their incessant action produce a small whirlpool into which the food is sucked. An example of this is seen in the Vorticella (Fig. 2).

GROUP OF VORTICELLA NEBULIFERA, on a Stem of Weed, Magnified.

A One undergoing spontaneous division.

B Another spirally retracted on its stalk.

C One with cilia retracted.

D A bud detached and swimming free.]

Having studied the action of these cilia in microscopic animals, you will be prepared to understand their office in your own organism. The lining membrane of your air-passages is covered with cilia; which may be observed by following the directions of Professor Sharpey, to whom science is indebted for a very exhaustive description of these organs. “To see them in motion, a portion of the ciliated mucous membrane may be taken from a recently-killed quadruped. The piece of membrane is to be folded with its free, or ciliated, surface outwards, placed on a slip of glass, with a little water or serum of blood, and covered with thin glass or mica. When it is now viewed with a power of 200 diameters, or upwards, a very obvious agitation will be perceived on the edge of the fold, and this appearance is caused by the moving cilia with which the surface of the membrane is covered. Being set close together, and moving simultaneously or in quick succession, the cilia, when in brisk action, give rise to the appearance of a bright transparent fringe along the fold of the membrane, agitated by such a rapid and incessant motion that the single threads which compose it cannot be perceived. The motion here meant is that of the cilia themselves; but they also set in motion the adjoining fluid, driving it along the ciliated surface, as is indicated by the agitation of any little particles that may accidentally float in it. The fact of the conveyance of fluids and other matters along the ciliated surface, as well as the direction in which they are impelled, may also be made manifest by immersing the membrane in fluid, and dropping on it some finely-pulverized substance (such as charcoal in fine powder), which will be slowly but steadily carried along in a constant and determinate direction.”[25]

It is an interesting fact, that while the direction in which the cilia propel fluids and particles is generally towards the interior of the organism, it is sometimes _reversed_; and, instead of beating the particles inwards, the cilia energetically beat them back, if they attempt to enter. Fatal results would ensue if this were not so. Our air-passages would no longer protect the lungs from particles of sand, coal-dust, and filings, flying about the atmosphere; on the contrary, the lashing hairs which cover the surface of these passages would catch up every particle, and drive it onwards into the lungs. Fortunately for us, the direction of the cilia is reversed, and they act as vigilant janitors, driving back all vagrant particles with a stern “No admittance--_even_ on business!” In vain does the whirlwind dash a column of dust in our faces--in vain does the air, darkened with coal-dust, impetuously rush up the nostrils: the air is allowed to pass on, but the dust is inexorably driven back. Were it not so, how could miners, millers, iron-workers, and all the modern Tubal Cains contrive to live in their loaded atmospheres? In a week, their lungs would be choked up.

Perhaps, you will tell me that this _is_ the case: that manufacturers of iron and steel are very subject to consumption; and that there is a peculiar discoloration of the lungs which has often been observed in coal miners, examined after death.

Not being a physician, and not intending to trouble you with medical questions, I must still place before you three considerations, which will show how untenable this notion is. First, although consumption may be frequent among the Sheffield workmen, the cause is not to be sought in their breathing filings, but in the sedentary and unwholesome confinement incidental to their occupation. Miners and coal-heavers are not troubled with consumption. Moreover, if the filings were the cause, all the artisans would suffer, when all breathe the same atmosphere. Secondly, while it is true that discoloured lungs have been observed in some miners, it has not been observed in all, or in many; whereas, it has been observed in men not miners, not exposed to any unusual amount of coal-dust. Thirdly, and most conclusively, experiment has shown that the coal-dust _cannot_ penetrate to the lungs. Claude Bernard, the brilliant experimenter, tied a bladder, containing a quantity of powdered charcoal, to the muzzle of a rabbit. Whenever the animal breathed, the powder within the bladder was seen to be agitated. Except during feeding time, the bladder was kept constantly on, so that the animal breathed only this dusty air. If the powder _could_ have escaped the vigilance of the cilia, and got into the lungs, this was a good occasion. But when the rabbit was killed and opened, many days afterwards, no powder whatever was found in the lungs, or bronchial tubes; several patches were collected about the nostrils and throat; but the cilia had acted as a strainer, keeping all particles from the air-tubes.

The swimming apparatus of the Opalina has led us far away from the little animal, who has been feeding while we have been lecturing. At the mention of feeding, you naturally look for the food that is eaten, the mouth and stomach that eat. But I hinted just now that this ethereal creature dispenses with a stomach, as too gross for its nature; and of course, by a similar refinement, dispenses with a mouth. Indeed, it has no organs whatever, except the cilia just spoken of. The same is true of several of the Infusoria; for you must know that naturalists no longer recognize the complex organization which Ehrenberg fancied he had detected in these microscopic beings. If it pains you to relinquish the piquant notion of a microscopic animalcule having a structure equal in complexity to that of the elephant, there will be ample compensation in the notion which replaces it, the notion of an ascending series of animal organisms, rising from the structureless _amœba_ to the complex frame of a mammal. On a future occasion we shall see that, great as Ehrenberg’s services have been, his _interpretations_ of what he saw have one by one been replaced by truer notions. His immense class of Infusoria has been, and is constantly being, diminished; many of his animals turn out to be plants; many of them embryos of worms; and some of them belong to the same divisions of the animal kingdom as the oyster and the shrimp: that is to say, they range with the Molluscs and Crustaceans. In these, of course, there is a complex organization; but in the Infusoria, as now understood, the organization is extremely simple. No one now believes the clear spaces visible in their substance to be stomachs, as Ehrenberg believed; and the idea of the _Polygastrica_, or many-stomached Infusoria, is abandoned. No one believes the coloured specs to be eyes; because, not to mention the difficulty of conceiving eyes where there is no nervous system, it has been found that even the spores of some plants have these coloured specs; and they are assuredly not eyes. If, then, we exclude the highly-organized _Rotifera_, or “Wheel Animalcules,” which are genuine Crustacea, we may say that all Infusoria, whether they be the young of worms or not, are of very simple organization.

And this leads us to consider what biologists mean by an _organ_: it is a particular portion of the body set apart for the performance of some particular function. The whole process of development is this setting apart for special purposes. The starting-point of Life is a single cell--that is to say, a microscopic sac, filled with liquid and granules, and having within it a nucleus, or smaller sac. Paley has somewhere remarked, that in the early stages, there is no difference discernible between a frog and a philosopher. It is very true; truer than he conceived. In the earliest stage of all, both the Batrachian and the Philosopher are nothing but single cells; although the one cell will develop into an Aristotle or a Newton, and the other will get no higher than the cold, damp, croaking animal which boys will pelt, anatomists dissect, and Frenchmen eat. From the starting-point of a single cell, this is the course taken: the cell divides itself into two, the two become four, the four eight, and so on, till a mass of cells is formed, not unlike the shape of a mulberry. This mulberry-mass then becomes a sac, with double envelopes, or walls: the inner wall, turned towards the yelk, or food, becomes the _assimilating_ surface for the whole; the outer wall, turned towards the surrounding medium, becomes the surface which is to bring frog and philosopher into contact and relation with the external world--the Non-Ego, as the philosopher, in after life, will call it. Here we perceive the first grand “setting apart,” or _differentiation_, has taken place: the embryo having an assimilating surface, which has little to do with the external world; and a sensitive, contractile surface, which has little to do with the preparation and transport of food. The embryo is no longer a mass of similar cells; it is already become dissimilar, _different_, as respects its inner and outer envelope. But these envelopes are at present uniform; one part of each is exactly like the rest. Let us, therefore, follow the history of Development, and we shall find that the inner wall gradually becomes unlike itself in various parts; and that certain organs, constituting a very complex apparatus of Digestion, Secretion, and Excretion, are all one by one wrought out of it, by a series of metamorphoses, or _differentiations_. The inner wall thus passes from a simple assimilating surface to a complex apparatus serving the functions of vegetative life.

Now glance at the outer wall: from it also various organs have gradually been wrought: it has developed into muscles, nerves, bones, organs of sense, and brain: all these from a simple homogeneous membrane!

With this bird’s-eye view of the course of Development, you will be able to appreciate the grand law first clearly enunciated by Goethe and Von Baer, as the law of animal life, namely, that Development is always from the general to the special, from the simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and this by a gradual series of _differentiations_.[26] Or to put it into the music of our deeply meditative Tennyson:--

“All nature widens upward. Evermore
The simpler essence lower lies:
More complex is more perfect--owning more
Discourse, more widely wise.”

You are now familiarized with the words “differentiation” and “development,” so often met with in modern writers; and have gained a distinct idea of what an “organ” is; so that on hearing of an animal without organs, you will at once conclude that in such an animal there has been no setting apart of any portion of the body for special purposes, but that all parts serve all purposes indiscriminately. Here is our Opalina, for example, without mouth, or stomach, or any other organ. It is an assimilating surface in every part; in every part a breathing, sensitive surface. Living on liquid food, it does not need a mouth to seize, or a stomach to digest, such food. The liquid, or gas, passes through the Opalina’s delicate skin, by a process which is called _endosmosis_; it there serves as food; and the refuse passes out again by a similar process, called _exosmosis_. This is the way in which many animals and all plants are nourished. The cell at the end of a rootlet, which the plant sends burrowing through the earth, has no mouth to seize, no open pores to admit the liquid that it needs; nevertheless the liquid passes into the cell, through its delicate cell-wall, and passes from this cell to _other_ cells, upwards from the rootlet to the bud. It is in this way, also, that the Opalina feeds: it is all-mouth, no-mouth; all-stomach, no-stomach. Every part of its body performs the functions which in more complex animals are performed by organs specially set apart. It feeds without mouth, breathes without lungs, and moves without muscles.

The Opalina, as I said, is a parasite. It may be found in various animals, and almost always in the frog. You will, perhaps, ask why it should be considered a parasite; why may it not have been swallowed by the frog in a gulp of water? Certainly, nothing would have been easier. But to remove your doubts, I open the skull of this frog, and carefully remove a drop of the liquid found inside, which, on being brought under the microscope, we shall most probably find containing some animalcules, especially those named _Monads_. These were not swallowed. They live in the cerebro-spinal fluid, as the Opalina lives in the digestive tube. Nay, if we extend our researches, we shall find that various organs have their various parasites. Here, for instance, is a parasitic worm from the frog’s bladder. Place it under the microscope, with a high power, and behold! It is called _Polystomum_--many-mouthed, or, more properly, many-suckered. You are looking at the under side, and will observe six large suckers with their starlike clasps (_e_), and the horny instrument (_f_), with which the animal bores its way. At _a_ there is another sucker, which serves also as a mouth; at _b_ you perceive the rudiment of a gullet, and at _d_ the reproductive organs. But pay attention to the pretty branchings of the digestive tube (_c_) which ramifies through the body like a blood-vessel.

POLYSTOMUM INTEGERRIMUM, Magnified.]

This arrangement of the digestive tube is found in many animals, and is often mistaken for a system of blood-vessels. In one sense this is correct; for these branching tubes are carriers of nutriment, and the only circulating vessels such animals possess; but the nutriment is _chyme_, not blood: these simple animals have not arrived at the dignity of blood, which is a higher elaboration of the food, fitted for higher organisms.

Thus may our frog, besides its own marvels, afford us many “authentic tidings of invisible things,” and is itself a little colony of Life. Nature is economic as well as prodigal of space. She fills the illimitable heavens with planetary and starry grandeurs, and the tiny atoms moving over the crust of earth she makes the homes of the infinitely little. Far as the mightiest telescope can reach, it detects worlds in clusters, like pebbles on the shore of Infinitude; deep as the microscope can penetrate, it detects Life within Life, generation within generation; as if the very Universe itself were not vast enough for the energies of Life!

That phrase, generation within generation, was not a careless phrase; it is exact. Take the tiny insect (_Aphis_) which, with its companions, crowds your rose-tree; open it, in a solution of sugar-water, under your microscope, and you will find in it a young insect nearly formed; open that young insect with care, and you will find in it, also, another young one, less advanced in its development, but perfectly recognizable to the experienced eye; and beside this embryo you will find many eggs, which would in time become insects!

Or take that lazy water-snail (_Paludina vivipara_), first made known to science by the great Swammerdamm, the incarnation of patience and exactness, and you will find, as he found, forty or fifty young snails, in various stages of development; and you will also find, as he found, some tiny worms, which, if you cut them open, will suffer three or four infusoria to escape from the opening.[27] In your astonishment you will ask, Where is this to end?

The observation recorded by Swammerdamm, like so many others of this noble worker, fell into neglect; but modern investigators have made it the starting-point of a very curious inquiry. The worms he found within the snail are now called _Cercaria-sacs_, because they contain the _Cercariæ_, once classed as Infusoria, and which are now known to be the early forms of parasitic worms inhabiting the digestive tube, and other cavities, of higher animals. These _Cercariæ_ have vigorous tails, with which they swim through the water like tadpoles, and like tadpoles, they lose their tails in after life. But how, think you, did these sacs containing _Cercariæ_ get into the water-snails? “By spontaneous generation,” formerly said the upholders of that hypothesis; and those who condemned the hypothesis were forced to admit they had no better explanation. It was a mystery, which they preferred leaving unexplained, rather than fly to spontaneous generation. And they were right. The mystery has at length been cleared up.[28] I will endeavour to bring together the scattered details, and narrate the curious story.

Under the eyelids of geese and ducks may be constantly found a parasitic worm (of the _Trematode_ order), which naturalists have christened _Monostomum mutabile_--Single-mouth, Changeable. This worm brings forth living young, in the likeness of active Infusoria, which, being covered with cilia, swim about in the water, as we saw the Opalina swim. Here is a portrait of one. (Fig. 4.)

Each of these animalcules develops a sac in its interior. The sac you may notice in the engraving. Having managed to get into the body of the water-snail, the animalcule’s part in the drama is at an end. It dies, and in dying liberates the sac, which is very comfortably housed and fed by the snail. If you examine this sac (Fig. 5), you will observe that it has a mouth and digestive tube, and is, therefore, very far from being, what its name imports, a mere receptacle; it is an independent animal, and lives an independent life. It feeds generously on the juices of the snail, and having fed, thinks generously of the coming generations. It was born inside the animalcule; why should it not in turn give birth to children of its own? To found a dynasty, to scatter progeny over the bounteous earth, is a worthy ambition. The mysterious agency of Reproduction begins in this sac-animal; and in a short while a brood of _Cercariæ_ move within it. The sac bursts, and the brood escapes. But how is this? The children are by no means the “very image” of their parent. They are not sacs, nor in the least resembling sacs, as you see. (Fig. 6.)

A EMBRYO OF MONOSTOMUM MUTABILE.
B Cercaria sac, just set free.

_a_ Mouth; _b_ Pigment spots; _c_ Sac.--Magnified.]

They have tails, and suckers, and sharp boring instruments, with other organs which their parent was without. To look at them you would as soon suspect a shrimp to be the progeny of an oyster, as these to be the progeny of the sac-animal. And what makes the paradox more paradoxical is, that not only are the _Cercariæ_ unlike their parent, but their parent was equally unlike its parent the embryo of _Monostomum_ (compare fig. 4). However, if we pursue this family history, we shall find the genealogy rights itself at last, and that this Cercaria will develop in the body of some bird into a _Monostomum mutabile_ like its ancestor. Thus the worm produces an animalcule, which produces a sac-animal, which produces a Cercaria, which becomes a worm exactly resembling its great-grandfather.

CERCARIA SAC.

A Mouth;

B Digestive tube;

C A Cercaria newly formed. Four others are seen in different
stages.--Magnified.]

CERCARIA DEVELOPED.

A Mouth; B, B, B Excretory organ; C Pigment spots; D Tail.
]

One peculiarity in this history is that while the _Monostomum_ produces its young in the usual way, the two _intermediate_ forms are produced by a process of budding, analogous to that observed in plants. Plants, as you know, are reproduced in two ways, from the seed, and from the bud. For seed-reproduction, peculiar organs are necessary; for bud-reproduction, there is no such differentiation needed: it is simply an out-growth. The same is true of many animals: they also bud like plants, and produce seeds (eggs) like plants. I have elsewhere argued that the two processes are essentially identical; and that both are but special forms of growth.[29] Not, however, to discuss so abstruse a question here, let us merely note that the Monostomum, into which the Cercaria will develop, produces eggs, from which young will issue; the second generation is not produced from eggs, but by internal budding; the third generation is likewise budded internally; but it, on acquiring maturity, will produce eggs. For this maturity, it is indispensable that the Cercaria should be swallowed by some bird or animal; only in the digestive tube can it acquire its egg-producing condition. How is it to get there? The ways are many; let us witness one:--

In this watchglass of water we have several _Cercariæ_ swimming about. To them we add three or four of those darting, twittering insects which you have seen in every vase of pond-water, and have learned to be the larvæ, or early forms, of the _Ephemeron_. The _Cercariæ_ cease flapping the water with their impatient tails, and commence a severe scrutiny of the strangers. When Odry, in the riotous farce, _Les Saltimbanques_, finds a portmanteau, he exclaims, “_Une malle! ce doit être à moi!_” (“Surely this _must_ belong to me!”) This seems to be the theory of property adopted by the Cercaria: “An insect! surely this belongs to me!” Accordingly every one begins creeping over the bodies of the Ephemera, giving an interrogatory poke with the spine, which will pierce the first soft place it can detect. Between the segments of the insect’s armour a soft and pierceable spot is found; and now, lads, to work! Onwards they bore, never relaxing in their efforts till a hole is made large enough for them to slip in by elongating their bodies. Once in, they dismiss their tails as useless appendages; and begin what is called the process of _encysting_--that is, of rolling themselves up into a ball, and secreting a mucus from their surface, which hardens round them like a shell. Thus they remain snugly ensconced in the body of the insect, which in time develops into a fly, hovers over the pond, and is swallowed by some bird. The fly is digested, and the liberated Cercaria finds itself in comfortable quarters, its shell is broken, and its progress to maturity is rapid.

Von Siebold’s description of another form of emigration he has observed in parasites will be read with interest. “For a long time,” he says, “the origin of the threadworm, known as _Filaria insectorum_, that lives in the cavity of the bodies of adult and larval insects, could not be accounted for. Shut up within the abdominal cavity of caterpillars, grasshoppers, beetles, and other insects, these parasites were supposed to originate by spontaneous generation, under the influence of wet weather or from decayed food. Helminthologists (students of parasitic worms) were obliged to content themselves with this explanation, since they were unable to find a better. Those who dissected these threadworms and submitted them to a careful inspection, could not deny the probability, since it was clear that they contained no trace of sexual organs. But on directing my attention to these entozoa, I became aware of the fact that they were not true _Filariæ_ at all, but belonged to a peculiar family of threadworms, embracing the genera of _Gordius_ and _Mermis_. Furthermore, I convinced myself that these parasites wander away when full-grown, boring their way from within through any soft place in the body of their host, and creeping out through the opening. These parasites do not emigrate because they are uneasy, or because the caterpillar is sickly; but from that same internal necessity which constrains the horsefly to leave the stomach of the horse where he has been reared, or which moves the gadfly to work its way out through the skin of the oxen. The larvæ of both these insects creep forth in order to become chrysalises, and thence to proceed to their higher and perfect condition. I have demonstrated that the perfect, full-grown, but _sexless_ threadworms of insects are in like manner moved by their desire to wander out of their previous homes, in order to enter upon a new period of their lives, which ends in the development of their sex. As they leave the bodies of their hosts they fall to the ground, and crawl away into the deeper and moister parts of the soil. Threadworms found in the damp earth, in digging up gardens and cutting ditches, have often been brought to me, which presented no external distinctions from the threadworms of insects. This suggested to me that the wandering threadworms of insects might instinctively bury themselves in damp ground, and I therefore instituted a series of experiments by placing the newly-emigrated worms in flower-pots filled with damp earth. To my delight I soon perceived that they began to bore with their heads into the earth, and by degrees drew themselves entirely in. For many months I kept the earth in the flower-pots moderately moist, and on examining the worms from time to time I found they had gradually attained their sex-development, and eggs were deposited in hundreds. Towards the conclusion of winter I could succeed in detecting the commencing development of the embryos in these eggs. By the end of spring they were fully formed, and many of them having left their shells were to be seen creeping about the earth. I now conjectured that these young worms would be impelled by their instincts to pursue a parasitic existence, and to seek out an animal to inhabit and to grow to maturity in; and it seemed not improbable that the brood I had reared would, like their parents, thrive best in the caterpillar. In order, therefore, to induce my young brood to immigrate, I procured a number of very small caterpillars which the first spring sunshine had just called into life. For the purpose of my experiment I filled a watch-glass with damp earth, taking it from amongst the flower-pots where the threadworms had wintered. Upon this I placed several of the young caterpillars.” The result was as he expected; the caterpillars were soon bored into by the worms, and served them at once as food and home.[30]

Frogs and parasites, worms and infusoria--are these worth the attention of a serious man? They have a less imposing appearance than planets and asteroids, I admit, but they are nearer to us, and admit of being more intimately known; and because they are thus accessible, they become more important to us. The life that stirs within us is also the life within them. It is for this reason, as I said at the outset, that although man’s noblest study must always be man, there are other studies less noble, yet not therefore ignoble, which must be pursued, even if only with a view to the perfection of the noblest. Many men, and those not always the ignorant, whose scorn of what they do not understand is always ready, despise the labours which do not obviously and directly tend to moral or political advancement. Others there are, who, fascinated by the grandeur of Astronomy and Geology, or by the immediate practical results of Physics and Chemistry, disregard all microscopic research as little better than dilettante curiosity. But I cannot think any serious study is without its serious value to the human race; and I know that the great problem of Life can never be solved while we are in ignorance of its simpler forms. Nor can anything be more unwise than the attempt to limit the sphere of human inquiry, especially by applying the test of immediate utility. All truths are related; and however remote from our daily needs some particular truth may seem, the time will surely come when its value will be felt. To the majority of our countrymen during the Revolution, when the conduct of James seemed of incalculable importance, there would have seemed something ludicrously absurd in the assertion that the newly-discovered differential calculus was infinitely more important to England and to Europe than the fate of all the dynasties; and few things could have seemed more remote from any useful end than this product of mathematical genius; yet it is now clear to every one that the conduct of James was supremely insignificant in comparison with this discovery. I do not say that men were unwise to throw themselves body and soul into the Revolution; I only say they would have been unwise to condemn the researches of mathematicians.

Let all who have a longing to study Nature in any of her manifold aspects, do so without regard to the sneers or objections of men whose tastes and faculties are directed elsewhere. From the illumination of many minds on many points, Truth must finally emerge. Man is, in Bacon’s noble phrase, the minister and interpreter of Nature; let him be careful lest he suffer this ministry to sink into a priesthood, and this interpretation to degenerate into an immovable dogma. The suggestions of apathy, and the prejudices of ignorance, have at all times inspired the wish to close the temple against new comers. Let us be vigilant against such suggestions, and keep the door of the temple ever open.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] The needful term Biology (from _Bios_, life, and _logos_, discourse) is now becoming generally adopted in England, as in Germany. It embraces all the separate sciences of Botany, Zoology, Comparative Anatomy, and Physiology.

[22] See EHRENBERG: _Microgeologie: das Erden und Felsen schaffende Wirken des unsichtbar kleinen selbstständigen Lebens auf der Erde_. 1854.

[23] CHARLES ROBIN: _Histoire Naturelle des Végétaux Parasites qui croissent sur l’Homme et sur les Animaux Vivants_. 1853.

[24] From _cilium_, a hair.

[25] _Quain’s Anatomy._ By SHARPEY AND ELLIS. Sixth edition. I., p. lxxiii. See also SHARPEY’S article, _Cilia_, in the _Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology_.

[26] GOETHE: _Zur Morphologie_, 1807. VON BAER: _Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte_, 1828. Part I., p. 158.

[27] SWAMMERDAMM. _Bibel der Natur_, pp. 75-77.

[28] By VON SIEBOLD. See his interesting work, _Ueber die Band-und-Blasenwürmer_. It has been translated by HUXLEY, and appended to the translation of KUECHENMEISTER _on Parasites_, published by the Sydenham Society.

[29] _Seaside Studies_, pp. 308, _sq._

[30] VON SIEBOLD: _Ueber Band-und-Blasenwürmer_. Translated by HUXLEY.

Father Prout’s Inaugurative Ode

TO THE AUTHOR OF “VANITY FAIR.”

I.

Ours is a faster, quicker age:
Yet erst at GOLDSMITH’S homely Wakefield Vicarage,
While Lady BLARNEY from the West End glozes
Mid the PRIMROSES,
Fudge! cries Squire THORNHILL,
Much to the wonder of young greenhorn MOSES.
Such word of scorn ill
Matches the “Wisdom Fair” thy whim proposes
To hold on CORNHILL.

II.

With Fudge, or Blarney, or the “Thames on Fire!”
Treat not thy buyer;
But proffer good material--
A genuine Cereal,
Value for twelvepence, and not dear at twenty.
Such wit replenishes thy Horn of Plenty!

III.

Nor wit alone dispense,
But sense:
And with thy sparkling Xerez
Let us have Ceres.
Of loaf thou hast no lack,
Nor set, like SHAKESPEARE’S zany, forth,
With lots of sack,
Of bread one pennyworth.

IV.

Sprightly, and yet sagacious,
Funny, yet farinaceous,
Dashing, and yet methodical--
So may thy periodical,
On this auspicious morn,
Exalt its horn,
Thron’d on the HILL OF CORN!

V.

Of aught that smacks of sect, surplice, or synod,
Be thy grain winnow’d!
Nor deign to win our laugh
With empty chaff.
Shun aught o’er which dullard or bigot gloats;
Nor seek our siller
With meal from TITUS OATES
Or flour of JOSEPH MILLER.

VI.

There’s corn in Egypt still
(Pilgrim from Cairo to Cornhill!)
Give each his fill.
But all comers among
Treat best the young;
Fill the big brothers’ knapsacks from thy bins,
But slip the Cup of Love in BENJAMIN’S.

VII.

Next as to those
Who bring their lumbering verse or ponderous prose
To where good SMITH AND ELDER
Have so long held their
Well-garnish’d Cornhill storehouse--
Bid them not bore us.
Tell them instead
To take their load next street, the HALL OF LEAD!

VIII.

Only one word besides--
As he who tanneth hides
Stocketh with proper implements his tannery:
So thou, Friend! do not fail
To store a stout corn flail,
Ready for use, within thy Cornhill granary.
Of old there walked abroad,
Prompt to right wrongs, Caliph HAROUN AL RASHID:
Deal thus with Fraud,
Or Job or Humbug--thrash it!

IX.

Courage, old Friend! long found
Firm at thy task, nor in fixt purpose fickle:
Up! choose thy ground,
Put forth thy shining sickle;--
Shun the dense underwood
Of Dunce or Dunderhood:
But reap North, South, East, Far West,
The world-wide Harvest!

Our Volunteers.

The French nation has indisputably the most warlike propensities of any in the world. Other countries make warlike preparations in self-defence, for the maintenance of their own rights and possessions, and to prevent any other power, or combination of powers, obtaining a position menacing to their safety, or injurious to their liberties. Their governments, when there are valid grounds for alarm, instil these apprehensions into the minds of the people, who are soon roused to meet the threatened danger. But the unremitting pursuit of the French nation is military glory: no government of that country can exist without ministering to it. France is now armed to the teeth, and ready to do battle for any cause--even “for an idea.”

England is the nation which, perhaps sooner than any other, may be called upon to check her in the indulgence of this propensity; and this country also offers more points against which aggressive operations can be carried out. Hence it is natural that the preparations of France should be made chiefly with reference to a contest with Great Britain; and these preparations have now arrived at such formidable proportions that it would be infatuation in us to neglect the means of resistance.

The strongest evidence in support of this hypothesis is to be found in the fact that the most extraordinary preparations which have been gradually but rapidly made by the French Government, at a vast expense--namely, its naval and coast armaments--can be directed against no other power but England. It does not necessarily follow that any aggressive measures are positively contemplated; but it is not the less essential for us to maintain a corresponding force, available not only against invasion, should it be attempted, but strong enough to protect our commerce by securing the freedom of the seas, and thus preventing this country from being reduced to a subordinate power.

British statesmen know and declare, and the nation feels, that it is essential to the maintenance of our possessions, our commerce, and our influence, that we should have a preponderating naval force. Other governments may demur to this, and may even be disposed to dispute the point, as France appears to be now preparing to do. It then becomes a question of national power and resources. This is an unfortunate alternative, but it is one which will not admit of compromise or arbitration: _we_ consider an absolute superiority on the seas essential to the safety of our shores, the prosperity of our commerce, and the security of our colonies; _they_ manifest a determination to contest our maritime supremacy, and to create a force which shall give them even a preponderating influence.

Let us put the case in what may be deemed the legitimate view, repudiating altogether any feeling of national animosity or prejudice. Whatever may be the result of the impending struggle for naval superiority--which does not altogether depend upon numerical force, but may be greatly influenced by the proficiency of either side in employing the newly-invented implements and modes of warfare--it must be conceded that we cannot expect our superiority will be so absolute as to enable us to trust entirely to our “wooden walls,” or to defensive armaments afloat: we must have an ample array of land forces to protect our homes, if menaced by the vast armies of France, which are constantly maintained in a state of full equipment and readiness.

Large armaments maintained during times of peace are repugnant to the feelings and good sense of the English nation; and yet if other nations, less strongly animated by industrial impulses and the principles of political economy, will accumulate immense powers of aggression, we must, in self-defence, maintain efficient means of resisting them. Patriotic feeling and high spirit in the population, even though aided by abundance of arms and ammunition, will not now, as in olden times, suffice. Soldiership is become a scientific profession; and an apprenticeship to the art of war, with skill and experience in every branch of it, are absolutely necessary to oppose with success a well-trained and disciplined force.

Our difficulties in the way of self-preservation are materially increased by the nature of our institutions and our feelings of personal independence. All other great nations in Europe have a power of compulsory enlistment; we have not: if we had, our standing forces for army and navy might be more moderate,--if we only retained efficacious means of rapid organization and equipment. According to our system, however, it is so long before we can procure the necessary number of men for the war establishment, that our only safety must consist in a much greater amount of permanent forces. In short, our purse must pay for our pride.

The volunteer system, however, tends, in some degree, to remedy this disadvantage, and will become more and more valuable in proportion as it shall conform itself gradually to such arrangements as will make our volunteers efficient for acting with our regular forces.

The first and prevalent idea from which the volunteer system sprang was of a _levée en masse_; that every man animated by British pluck and spirit (and they would number hundreds of thousands) should be well practised in the use of the rifle, and, in case of invasion, should turn out to oppose the enemy, to line the hedges, hang upon the flank and rear of the invading force, and cut it to pieces.

That our volunteers, who have nobly come forward spontaneously, without any prompting from government, would be ready to devote their lives, as they are devoting their time and energies, to the defence of their country against invasion, no one who appreciates the English character will doubt; but that such a heterogeneous body of men, if opposed to a highly-trained and disciplined force of veteran soldiers, would be able to repel the attack of an army, is now generally admitted to be a fallacy; and it would be doing injustice to the intelligence and good sense of Englishmen to blink the truth, which must be obvious to every soldier who has had experience of actual warfare.

Bodies of civilians, however courageous and well drilled, would be ill calculated to bear the hardships and fatigues of a soldier’s life; nor could they be relied upon, even as a matter of numbers: a rainy night or two in the open fields, and occasional short supplies of food, would thin their ranks prodigiously. It cannot be supposed that men of any class or nation, however brave, suddenly leaving comfortable homes and in-door pursuits, could endure that exposure and privation which is required of soldiers--men selected for their hardy constitutions and well-knit frames, and trained to implicit obedience, and habituated to act together. Composed of men of different descriptions and habits, without military discipline and organization, they would be wanting in cohesion and unity of action; or if each man or small party acted on individual impulse, their efforts would be unavailing to arrest the progress of an army advancing in solid masses, like some vast and complex machine animated by life and motion. Panics would be rife amongst them, and but few of the bravest even would stand when they heard the action gaining on their flanks and rear. Moreover, no general would know how to deal with numbers of them under his command, for fear of his dispositions being deranged by their proceedings; nor could any commissariat or other department be prepared to provide for so uncertain and fluctuating a body.

A confidence in the efficiency of an armed population to resist the invasion of their country by regular armies has been created by reference to history; and the examples of the United States, of the Tyrol, of Spain, and others, have been triumphantly quoted; but an investigation into the circumstances of each case will show how greatly they all differ from such circumstances as would attend an attack upon England. In the cases cited, either the country was wild and mountainous, without communications and resources, the invading army small, or the contest greatly prolonged: rarely, if ever, has the invader been thoroughly checked _in his first progress_; but when forced to break into detachments and to act in small bodies, he has, by a spirited and energetic population, been harassed beyond his strength, and thus _eventually_ forced to abandon the attempt.

It being evident, then, that a mere rising in mass of the population would be unavailing, and even mischievous, leading to a lamentable waste of life, and encouraging the invaders in proportion as the defenders were discomfited, we have now to consider the best means of utilizing the present volunteer movement, which assumes for its basis some degree of organization and training.

Government prudently abstained from any interference with the movement, or from involving itself in any undertaking to organize the volunteers; for that would have led, not only to great and indefinite expenses, but to the abstracting of available resources from the established forces of the country, and also to other inconveniences, without, as yet, any reliable and adequate advantages in prospect. The movement being thus left to its own impulses, a large number of gentlemen, and others in sufficiently easy circumstances, determined to enrol themselves, in different localities, into self-supporting corps of riflemen. Their determination was most spirited and praiseworthy, and government, without pledging itself to any fixed or great amount of support, now affords, in many ways, aid and direction to the movement, without too minute an interference in its essentially voluntary arrangements.

Thus we have already many thousands of stout hearts, constituting an _impromptu_ armed force, at little cost to government, advancing in organization and exercises, having arms and accoutrements, and above all, making preparation for thoroughly practising with the rifle--their strongest desire being to become first-rate shots. Here is a mass of most superb material; but we would earnestly impress upon the volunteers, and upon the country, not to rely too much upon stout hearts and good shots: much else is needful. It is quite a mistake to suppose that mere perfection in firing at a mark will make a good rifleman for the field. Volunteers, to be efficient in action, must form a component part of an army. Every part of an army in the field must be well in hand of the generals in command--light infantry and riflemen must be equal to all movements, in compact as well as dispersed order, and in the several combinations of the two. By this alone will they be really formidable, and by this alone will they acquire a confidence and steadiness which mere innate courage can never give.