Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 by Various
V >>
Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
[Illustration: Common Mussel, Unio, cut transversely: _a_, foot; _bb_,
gills; _c_, mantle; _d_, shell; _e_, heart; _f_, main cavity, with
intestines.]
The second class in this type is that of Gasteropoda, so named from the
fleshy muscular expansion on which they move, and which is therefore
called a foot: a very inappropriate name; since it has no relation or
resemblance to a foot, though it is used as a locomotive organ. This
class includes all the Snails, Slugs, Cockles, Conchs, Periwinkles,
Whelks, Limpets, and the like. Some of them have no solid covering; but
the greater part are protected by a single shell, and on this account
they are called Univalves, in contradistinction to the Acephala or
Bivalves. These shells, though always single, differ from each other by
an endless variety of form and color,--from the flat simple shell of
the Limpet to the elaborate spiral and brilliant hues of the Cones and
Cowries. Different as is their external covering, however, if we examine
the internal structure of a Gasteropod, we find the same general
arrangement of parts that prevails in the Acephala, showing that both
belong to the same great division of the Animal Kingdom. The mantle
envelops the animal, and lines its single shell as it lined the double
shell of the Oyster; the gills are placed on either side of it; the
stomach, with the winding alimentary canal, is in the centre of the
body; the heart and liver are placed in the same relation to it as in
the Acephala; and though the so-called foot would seem to be a new
feature, it is but a muscular expansion of the ventral side of the body.
There is an evident superiority in this class over the preceding one, in
the greater prominence of the anterior extremity, where there are two or
more feelers, with which eyes more or less developed are connected; and
though there is nothing that can be properly called a head, yet there
can be no hesitation as to the distinction between the front and hind
ends of the body.
[Illustration: Limpet, Patella, cut transversely: _a_, foot; _b_, gills;
_c_, mantle; _d_, shell; _e_, heart; _f_, main cavity, with intestines.]
The third and highest class of Mollusks has been called Cephalopoda, in
reference again to a special feature of their structure. They have long
arms or feelers around the head, serving as organs of locomotion, by
which they propel themselves through the water with a velocity that is
quite extraordinary, when compared with the sluggishness of the other
Mollusks. In these animals the head is distinctly marked,--being
separated, by a contraction or depression behind it, from the rest of
the body. The feelers, so prominent on the anterior extremity of
the Gasteropoda, are suppressed in Cephalopoda, and the eyes are
consequently brought immediately on the side of the head, and are very
large in proportion to the size of the animal. A skin corresponding
to the mantle envelops the body, and the gills are on either side of
it;--the stomach with its winding canal, the liver, and heart occupy the
centre of the body, as in the two other classes. This class includes all
the Cuttle-Fishes, Squids, and Nautili, and has a vast number of fossil
representatives. Many of these animals are destitute of any shell; and
where they have a shell, it is not coiled from right to left or from
left to right as in the spiral of the Gasteropoda, but from behind
forwards as in the Nautilus. These shells are usually divided into a
number of chambers,--the animal, as it grows, building a wall behind
it at regular intervals, and always occupying the external chamber,
retaining, however, a connection with his past home by a siphon that
runs through the whole succession of chambers. The readers of the
"Atlantic Monthly" cannot fail to remember the exquisite poem suggested
to the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by this singular feature in the
structure of the so-called Chambered Shells.
[Illustration: Common Squid, Loligo, cut transversely: _a_, foot or
siphon; _b_, gills; _c_, mantle; _d_, shell; _e_, heart; _f_, main
cavity, with intestines.]
Cuvier divided the Mollusks also into a larger number of classes than
are now admitted. He placed the Barnacles with them on account of their
shells; and it is only since an investigation of the germs born from
these animals has shown them to be Articulates that their true position
is understood. They give birth to little Shrimps that afterwards become
attached to the rocks and assume the shelly covering that has misled
naturalists about them. Brachiopods formed another of his classes;
but these differ from the other Bivalves only in having a net-work of
blood-vessels in the place of the free gills, and this is merely a
complication of structure, not a difference in the general mode
of execution, for their position and relation to the rest of the
organization are exactly the same in both. Pteropods constituted another
class in his division of the type of Mollusks; but these animals, again,
form only an order in the class of Gasteropoda, as Brachiopods form an
order in the class of Acephala.
In the third division of the Animal Kingdom, the Articulates, we have
again three classes: Worms, Crustacea, and Insects. The lowest of these
three classes, the Worms, presents the typical structure of that branch
in the most uniform manner, with little individualization of parts. The
body is a long cylinder divided through its whole length by movable
joints, while the head is indicated only by a difference in the
front-joint. There is here no concentration of vitality in special parts
of the structure, as in the higher animals, but the nervous force is
scattered through the whole body,--every ring having, on its lower side,
either two nervous swellings, one on the right, the other on the left
side, connected by nervous threads with those that precede and those
that follow them, or these swellings being united in the median line.
It is this equal distribution of nervous force through the whole system
that gives to these animals such an extraordinary power of repairing
any injured part, so that, if cut in two, the front part may even
reconstruct a tail for itself, while the hind part produces a new
head, and both continue to live as distinct animals. This facility of
self-repair, after a separation of the parts, which is even a normal
mode of multiplication in some of them, does not indicate, as may at
first appear, a greater intensity of vital energy, but, on the contrary,
arises from an absence of any one nervous centre such as exists in
all the higher animals, and is the key to their whole organization. A
serious injury to the brain of a Vertebrate destroys vitality at once,
for it holds the very essence of its life; whereas in many of the lower
animals any part of the body may be destroyed without injury to the
rest. The digestive cavity in the Worms runs the whole length of the
body; and the respiratory organs, wherever they are specialized, appear
as little vesicles or gill-like appendages either along the back or
below the sides, connected with the locomotive appendages.
This class includes animals of various degrees of complication of
structure, from those with highly developed organizations to the lowest
Worms that float like long threads in the water and hardly seem to be
animals. Yet even these creatures, so low in the scale of life, are
not devoid of some instincts, however dim, of feeling and affection. I
remember a case in point that excited my own wonder at the time, and may
not be uninteresting to my readers. A gentleman from Detroit had had
the kindness to send me one of those long thread-like Worms (_Gordius_)
found often in brooks and called Horse-Hairs by the common people. When
I first received it, it was coiled up in a close roll at the bottom of
the bottle, filled with fresh water, that contained it, and looked more
like a little tangle of black sewing-silk than anything else. Wishing
to unwind it, that I might examine its entire length, I placed it in
a large china basin filled with water, and proceeded very gently to
disentangle its coils, when I perceived that the animal had twisted
itself around a bundle of its eggs, holding them fast in a close
embrace. In the process of unwinding, the eggs dropped away and floated
to a little distance. Having finally stretched it out to its full
length, perhaps half a yard, I sat watching to see if this singular
being that looked like a long black thread in the water would give any
signs of life. Almost immediately it moved towards the bundle of eggs,
and, having reached it, began to sew itself through and through the
little white mass, passing one end of its body through it, and then
returning to make another stitch, as it were, till the eggs were at last
completely entangled again in an intricate net-work of coils. It seemed
to me almost impossible that this care of copying could be the result of
any instinct of affection in a creature of so low an organization, and I
again separated it from the eggs, and placed them at a greater distance,
when the same action was repeated. On trying the experiment a third
time, the bundle of eggs had become loosened, and a few of them dropped
off singly into the water. The efforts which the animal then made to
recover the missing ones, winding itself round and round them, but
failing to bring them into the fold with the rest, because they were too
small, and evaded all efforts to secure them, when once parted from
the first little compact mass, convinced me that there was a definite
purpose in its attempts, and that even a being so low in the scale
of animal existence has some dim consciousness of a relation to its
offspring. I afterwards unwound also the mass of eggs, which, when
coiled up as I first saw it, made a roll of white substance about the
size of a coffee-bean, and found that it consisted of a string of eggs,
measuring more than twelve feet in length, the eggs being held together
by some gelatinous substance that cemented them and prevented them from
falling apart. Cutting this string across, and placing a small section
under the microscope, I counted on one surface of such a cut from
seventy to seventy-five eggs; and estimating the entire number of eggs
according to the number contained on such a surface, I found that there
were not less than eight millions of eggs in the whole string. The
fertility of these lower animals is truly amazing, and is no doubt a
provision of Nature against the many chances of destruction to which
these germs, so delicate and often microscopically small, must be
exposed. The higher we rise in the Animal Kingdom, the more limited do
we find the number of progeny, and the care bestowed upon them by the
parents is in proportion to this diminution.
The next class in the type of Articulates is that of Crustacea,
including Lobsters, Crabs, and Shrimps. It may seem at first that
nothing can be more unlike a Worm than a Lobster; but a comparison of
the class-characters shows that the same general plan controls the
organization in both. The body of the Lobster is divided into a
succession of joints or rings, like that of the Worm; and the fact that
the front rings in the Lobster are soldered together, so as to make a
stiff front region of the body, inclosing the head and chest, while only
the hind rings remain movable, thus forming a flexible tail, does not
alter in the least the general structure, which consists in both of
a body built of articulated rings. The nervous swellings, which were
evenly distributed through the whole body in the Worm, are more
concentrated here, in accordance with the prevalent combination of the
rings in two distinct regions of the body, the larger ones corresponding
to the more important organs; but their relation to the rest of the
organization, and their connection by nervous threads with each other,
remain the same. The respiratory organs, which in most of the Worms were
mere vesicles on the lower part of the sides of the body, are here more
highly organized gills; but their general character and relation to
other parts of the structure are unchanged, and in this respect
the connection of the gills of Crustacea with their legs is quite
significant. The alimentary canal consists of a single digestive cavity
passing through the whole body, as in Worms, the anterior part of which
is surrounded by a large liver. What is true of the Lobsters is true
also, so far as class-characters are concerned, of all the Crustacea.
Highest in this type are the Insects, and among these I include Spiders
and Centipedes as well as Winged Insects. It is true that the Centipedes
have a long uniform body like Worms, and the Spiders have the body
divided into two regions like the Crustacea, while the body in true
Insects has three distinct regions, head, chest, and hind body; but
notwithstanding this difference, both the former share in the peculiar
class-character that places them with the Winged Insects in a separate
group, distinct from all the other Articulates. We have seen that in the
Worms the respiratory organs are mere vesicles, while in the Crustacea
they are more highly organized gills; but in Centipedes, Spiders,
and Winged Insects, the breathing-apparatus is aerial, consisting of
air-holes on the sides of the body, connected with a system of tubes and
vessels extending into the body and admitting air to all parts of it. In
the Winged Insects this system is very elaborate, filling the body with
air to such a degree as to render it exceedingly light and adapted to
easy and rapid flight. The general arrangement of parts is the same in
this class as in the two others, the typical character being alike in
all.
We come now to the highest branch of the Animal Kingdom, that to which
we ourselves belong,--the Vertebrates. This type is usually divided into
four classes, Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammalia; and though many
naturalists believe that it includes more, and I am myself of that
opinion, I shall allude here only to the four generally admitted
classes, as they are sufficient for my present purpose, and will serve
to show the characters upon which classes are based. In a former paper I
have explained in general terms the plan of structure of this type,--a
backbone, with a bony arch above and a bony arch below, forming two
cavities that contain all the systems of organs, the whole being
surrounded by the flesh and skin. Now whether a body so constructed lie
prone in the water, like a Fish,--or be lifted on imperfect legs, like
a Reptile,--or be balanced on two legs, while the front limbs become
wings, as in Birds,--or be raised upon four strong limbs terminating in
paws or feet, as in Quadrupeds,--or stand upright with head erect, while
the limbs consist of a pair of arms and a pair of legs, as in Man,--does
not in the least affect that structural conception under which they are
all included. Every Vertebrate has a backbone; every Vertebrate has a
bony arch above that backbone and a bony arch below it, forming two
cavities,--no matter whether these arches be of hard bone, or of
cartilage, or even of a softer substance; every Vertebrate has the
brain, the spinal marrow or spinal cord, and the organs of the senses in
the upper cavity, and the organs of digestion, respiration, circulation,
and reproduction in the lower one; every Vertebrate has four locomotive
appendages built of the same bones and bearing the same relation to the
rest of the organization, whether they be called pectoral and ventral
fins, or legs, or wings and legs, or arms and legs. Notwithstanding
the rudimentary condition of these limbs in some Vertebrates and their
difference of external appearance in the different groups, they are all
built of the same structural elements. These are the typical characters
of the whole branch, and exist in all its representatives.
What now are the different modes of expressing this structural plan that
lead us to associate certain Vertebrates together in distinct classes?
Beginning with the lowest class,--the Fishes are cold-blooded, they
breathe through gills, and they are egg-laying; in other words, though
they have the same general structure as the other Vertebrates, they
have a special mode of circulation, respiration, and reproduction. The
Reptiles are also cold-blooded, though their system of circulation is
somewhat more complicated than that of the Fishes; they breathe through
lungs, though part of them retain their gills through life; and they lay
eggs, but larger and fewer ones than the Fishes, diminishing in number
in proportion to their own higher or lower position in their class. They
also bestow greater care upon their offspring than most of the
Fishes. The Birds are warm-blooded and air-breathing, having a double
circulation; they are egg-laying like the two other classes, but their
eggs are comparatively few in number, and the young are hatched by the
mother and fed by the parent birds till they can provide for themselves.
The Mammalia are also warm-blooded and breathe through lungs; but
they differ from all other Vertebrates in their mode of reproduction,
bringing forth living young which they nurse with milk. Even in the
lowest members of this highest group of the Vertebrates, at the head
of which stands Man himself, looking heavenward it is true, but
nevertheless rooted deeply in the Animal Kingdom, we have the dawning
of those family relations, those intimate ties between parents and
children, on which the whole social organization of the human race is
based. Man is the crowning work of God on earth; but though so nobly
endowed, we must not forget that we are the lofty children of a race
whose lowest forms lie prostrate within the water, having no higher
aspiration than the desire for food; and we cannot understand the
possible degradation and moral wretchedness of Man, without knowing that
his physical nature is rooted in all the material characteristics that
belong to his type and link him even with the Fish. The moral and
intellectual gifts that distinguish him from them are his to use or to
abuse; he may, if he will, abjure his better nature and be _Vertebrate_
more than Man. He may sink as low as the lowest of his type, or he may
rise to a spiritual height that will make that which distinguishes him
from the rest far more the controlling element of his being than that
which unites him with them.
LOVE AND SKATES.
IN TWO PARTS.
PART II.
CHAPTER VII.
WADE DOWN!
The hugging of Wade by the happy pair had to be done metaphorically,
since it was done in the sight of all Dunderbunk.
He had divined a happy result, when he missed Bill Tarbox from the
arena, and saw him a furlong away, hand in hand with his reconciled
sweetheart.
"I envy you, Bill," said he, "almost too much to put proper fervor into
my congratulations."
"Your time will come," the foreman rejoined.
And says Belle, "I am sure there is a lady skating somewhere, and only
waiting for you to follow her."
"I don't see her," Wade replied, looking with a mock-grave face up
and down and athwart the river. "When you've all gone to dinner, I'll
prospect ten miles up and down and try to find a good matrimonial claim
that's not taken."
"You will not come up to dinner?" Belle asked.
"I can hardly afford to make two bites of a holiday," said Wade. "I've
sent Perry up for a luncheon. Here he comes with it. So I cede my
quarter of your pie, Miss Belle, to a better fellow."
"Oh!" cries Perry, coming up and bowing elaborately. "Mr. and Mrs.
Tarbox, I believe. Ah, yes! Well, I will mention it up at Albany. I am
going to take my Guards up to call on the Governor."
Perry dashed off, followed by a score of Dunderbunk boys, organized by
him as the Purtett Guards, and taught to salute him as Generalissimo
with military honors.
So many hundreds of turkeys, done to a turn, now began to have an effect
upon the atmosphere. Few odors are more subtile and pervading than this,
and few more appetizing. Indeed, there is said to be an odd fellow, a
strictly American gourmand, in New York, who sits, from noon to dusk
on Christmas-Day, up in a tall steeple, merely to catch the aroma of
roast-turkey floating over the city,--and much good, it is said, it does
him.
Hard skating is nearly as effective to whet hunger as this gentleman's
expedient. When the spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of
Ceylon's isle over the river and every whiff talked Turkey, the
population of Dunderbunk listened to the wooing and began to follow its
several noses--snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, fines,
bulgies, and bifids--on the way to the several households which those
noses adorned or defaced. Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes, a
DINNER, that day, and Richard Wade was gratefully remembered by many
over-fed foundry-men and their over-fed families.
Wade had not had half skating enough.
"I'll time myself down to Skerrett's Point," he thought, "and take my
luncheon there among the hemlocks."
The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, Wade's friend and
college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe,
and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade's eyes
the rumor of his return.
Skerrett's Point was a mile below the Foundry. Our hero did his mile
under three minutes. How many seconds under, I will not say. I do not
wish to make other fellows unhappy.
The Point was a favorite spot of Wade's. Many a twilight of last summer,
tired with his fagging at the Works to make good the evil of Whiffler's
rule, he had lain there on the rocks under the hemlocks, breathing the
spicy methyl they poured into the air. After his day's hard fight, in
the dust and heat of the Foundry, with anarchy and unthrift, he used to
take the quiet restoratives of Nature, until the murmur and fragrance of
the woods, the cool wind, and the soothing loiter of the shining stream
had purged him from the fevers of his task.
To this old haunt he skated, and kindling a little fire, as an old
campaigner loves to do, he sat down and lunched heartily on Mrs.
Purtett's cold leg,--cannibal thought!--on the cold leg of Mrs.
Purtett's yesterday's turkey. Then lighting his weed,--dear ally of the
lonely,--the Superintendent began to think of his foreman's bliss, and
to long for something similar on his own plane.
"I hope the wish is father to its fulfilment," he said. "But I must not
stop here and be spooney. Such a halcyon day I may not have again in all
my life, and I ought to make the best of it, with my New Skates."
So he dashed off, and filled the little cove above the Point with a
labyrinth of curves and flourishes.
When that bit of crystal tablet was well covered, the podographer sighed
for a new sheet to inscribe his intricate rubricas upon. Why not write
more stanzas of the poetry of motion on the ice below the Point? Why
not?
Braced by his lunch on the brown fibre of good Mrs. Purtett's cold
drumstick and thigh, Wade was now in fine trim. The air was more
glittering and electric than ever. It was triumph and victory and paean
in action to go flashing along over this footing, smoother than polished
marble and sheenier than first-water gems.
Wade felt the high exhilaration of pure blood galloping through a body
alive from top to toe. The rhythm of his movement was like music to him.
The Point ended in a sharp promontory. Just before he came abreast of
it, Wade under mighty headway flung into his favorite corkscrew spiral
on one foot, and went whirling dizzily along, round and round, in a
straight line.
At the dizziest moment, he was suddenly aware of a figure, also turning
the Point at full speed, and rushing to a collision.
He jerked aside to avoid it. He could not look to his footing. His skate
struck a broken oar, imbedded in the ice. He fell violently, and lay
like a dead man.
His New Skates, Testimonial of Merit, seem to have served him a shabby
trick.
CHAPTER VIII.
TETE-A-TETE.
Seeing Wade lie there motionless, the lady----
Took off her spectacles, blew her great red nose, and stiffly drew near.
Spectacles! Nose! No,--the latter feature of hers had never become
acquainted with the former; and there was as little stiffness as nasal
redness about her.
A fresh start, then,--and this time accuracy!
Appalled by the loud thump of the stranger's skull upon the chief river
of the State of New York, the lady--it was a young lady whom Wade had
tumbled to avoid--turned, saw a human being lying motionless, and swept
gracefully toward him, like a Good Samaritan, on the outer edge. It was
not her fault, but her destiny, that she had to be graceful even under
these tragic circumstances.
"Dead!" she thought. "Is he dead?"
The appalling thump had cracked the ice, and she could not know how well
the skull was cushioned inside with brains to resist a blow.
She shuddered, as she swooped about toward this possible corpse. It
might be that he was killed, and half the fault hers. No wonder her
fine color, shining in the right parts of an admirably drawn face, all
disappeared instantly.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19