The Unity of the Organism 



crawl exactly like normal animals except as to a small dif- 

 ference to be noticed later." The wave of muscle con- 

 traction and other movements, starting at the anterior end, 

 passed over the point at which the ganglionic chain was in- 

 terrupted and on to the hind end of the body just as though 

 there were no such interruption. "The movements were 

 coordinated exactly in the same way as in the normal ani- 

 mal." 



These experiments, together with others that have since 

 been performed by other investigators, overthrow, as Loeb 

 says, "the idea that coordination in these animals is deter- 

 mined by a special centre of coordination which is located 

 in the brain." 7 



But if the brain is not the coordinating* center and does 



O 



not contain it, what and where is that center? The answer is 

 there is no such center. Coordination is not a central matter 

 at all. Rather it is a matter of the working together of 

 many parts, each duly balanced off with many others, and 

 properly subordinated to the whole animal. 



The details of the truth thus stated in general terms can 

 be illustrated more advantageously by referring to some of 

 Loeb's own observations on a group of annelids considerably 

 higher in the scale of life than the earthworm. I refer to 

 the pile worms familiar to many persons accumstomed to 

 marine shore fishing. This group of worms, known collec- 

 tively as nereid annelids, are far more "heady" than earth- 

 worms in that the useful body member named head is more 

 definitely set off from the rest of the body than it is in the 

 earthworm, and is outfitted with eye-spots, touch appen- 

 dages, and so on, wholly lacking in the earthworm. Nereis 

 is much more highly "cephalized" than is the earthworm, so 

 brain centralization would be expected to present features 

 here not occurring in the more lowly worm. When nereids 

 are deprived of the supra-esophageal ganglia their behavior 

 is such as to suggest at first sight support for the concep- 



