Life: its Forms and Varieties.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XII, Issue 506, 5 September 1867, Page 2

Life: its Forms and Varieties.

('Coaliiiucd/rom our last.)

The reproductive powers of these lower animals arc something wonderful; imagine animaleulte Whose progeny shall in a mouth number two hundred and fifty millions; another, which in four days shall multiply to ouo hundred and seventy billions; how would you exterminate a worm that contained more than sixty millions of eggs r Look at the bl uv-lly with her family’ of twenty thousand, and lno cod-fish, bringing forth four millions of eggs at a birth; and then think of all Hie myriads of microscopic life, of cater- ' pillars, of all the Hies, and you will not thou say mat .t is cruel to kill them or permit them to kill 'one aitoiher. The wonder rather is that they do not overpopulate and cover the face of nature; y et perhaps it may be explained, if yon consider it an explanation, by supposing that there is so muca vital power allowanced out to the whole earth, and that this vital power must be in such proportion for both animal and vegetable life as shall least seriously interfere with their mutual wellbeing. Thus have 1 given you a lew instances of the strong vital power residing in the lower forms of animal life. Let us now look higher and divide animal life into two great classes, vertebrate and invertebrate ; vertebrate, those that have bones, such as birds, beasts, Sislies, and icptilcs : invertebrate, those without bones, whoso llosh is fixed ou to their lough outer skin, which thus serves the purpose of the bony framework of the higher animal Considering their sice, many of these animals without bones have groat muscular power. There is no vertebrate animal which for its! sirm can jump as far as the Ilea; for ferocity and) powerfulness of jaw the common black beetle far I !exceeds the tiger; even for making a noise the cricket of Brazil surpasses any larger animal, for it Is said to be heard a mile off, and so I might go on about the ant and bee, and many others. t will now direct your attention to the form aud varieties of life. Anyone who carefully considers 1 the different forms of life must continually observe t he t cadency of all forms to run toget her, especially in early life ; the want of well-ni.akcd difference's between one class of created beings and its nearest neighbor. Who can define between the lowest forms of animal life, and some forms of the vegetable kingdom ? Ail our classes uiauimai iue have a tendency to merge one into the other—the worm into the fish—the fish into the reptile—the reptile into the bird—the bird into the mammalian ! —and some very scientific men have tried to show' how the mammal may be but a modified man;in i. ther words that we—or rat oer they—are closely related to the gorilla. We should be sorry to see these great scientific men turn their backs upon their poor relations ; yet still, for all their arguments, we must confess that wa have no .-eliowfeeiing for the gorilla, aud that, taking oven the lowest slyie of reasoning— t he anatomical or fleshly one—wc ibid in our meanest idiot a considerably | larger brain than they show in their monkey jthere is an appreciable difference between the) structure of one and of the other. What is the i structure of living bodies? In what forms do wefind it arranged? I have already referred to thei lowest structural form of life, the lit tle jelly-like I amseba; now all animal and vegetable bodies are

built up of nothing hut minute microscopic narticles, very much resembling it. When Very minute, these particles are called molecules; when , larger, if they be covered with a skin, they are | called cells. When you shake together oil aud raw | white of an egg, you form myriads of these cells, I for tho albumen of the egg forms an envelope .to ! the globules of the oil. These cells may he soft, Ins m tat; or hard, as in hone :in shape they may round, oval, or many-sided; some aio lengthened | out like hairs, others flattened like in size [ they vary from the five-hundredth to the ten-thou- | sandth of an inch, and yet of these is built up the I violet and mighty oak. The tiny animalcule that j swims about in us world of waters —the little dowdrop—this little creature that is so wonderful in [its minuteness, so exquisite in its symmetry, and j yet apparently so simple in its mechanism, and so WiLii the frog, the bird, the elephant, and oven the man we find covered outside and inside through the mouth and nose with layers of very fine scaly cells, which dip down into every depression, leaving no part bare. These scales, as in the crocodile, are lor protection, for if you graze some of them off your knuckles, you say that you have a sore place, and you instinctively take measures to protect it. Internally these scales are continued jiiito every minute gland and organ of the body. | Let us look at the glands—those that secrete the 1 tears, those that secrete tho saliva, the gastric .juice, the bile—chemically aud microscopically jwo flud no difference in the substance of their cells; the blood is the same for all, and yet how different is the liquid poured forth from each! | it hat makes one kind of coll produce the neutral j bile, another the alkaline saliva, and another the acid gastric juice ? Here, opr knowledge fails us, and we ■ayit is their peculiarity so to do—in other words, that we cumiot account for it. The- contents of these cells vary greatly, some, for instance, as in the pupil of the eye, have black charcoal-like matter ; others, as in the oil-glands of the skin, have fatty contents, and those of hone possess earthy matter. The faculty of life gives each of these cells the power to remove from the blood its food by which it grows, as well as the peculiar substance for the production of which tne cell exists; each cell according to its position does its duty for a time and then passes away; all we know of tho various processses in which those cells are engaged is that each is a form of life peculiar to the cell according to its position—a form of life, not of chemical combination. (To be continued.)