ZOOLOGY. 259 



never by any accident more like that of a frog. What is true of the* 

 newt is true 'of every animal and plant ; the acorn tends to build itself 

 up again into a woodland giant such as that from whose twig it fell ; 

 the spore of the humblest lichen reproduces the green or brown incrus- 

 tation which gave it birth ; and at the other end of the scale of life, the 

 child that resembled neither the paternal nor the maternal side of the 

 house would be regarded as a kind of monster. So that the one end 

 to which, in all living beings, the formative impulse is tending the 

 one scheme which the Archa3us of the old speculators strives to carry 

 out - - seems to be to mould the offspring into the likeness of the parent. 

 It is the first great law of reproduction that the offspring tends to re- 

 semble its parent or parents more closely than anything else. West- 

 minster Review. 



INFLUENCE OF THE NURSE UPON THE NURSLING. 



In general, people are wholly unaware of the fact that bones grow 

 and waste with great rapidity. Bone is composed chiefly of earthy 

 matters, and we should as soon expect a mile-stone to increase and de- 

 crease with the changing hours, as this inorganic -looking bone. Never- 

 theless, it is a fact, that bones are always in an active state of waste 

 and repair, and no tissue in the body is so rapidly and successfully re- 

 paired after injury, or after portions have been cut away, as the bony 

 tissue. Some years ago, M. Flourens hit upon the ingenious device of 

 tracing the growth of bone, by giving animals madder in their 

 food. The madder colored all the new deposits, so that, after a time, 

 every bone in the body was of a deep red. If, of two animals thus 

 fed, one were deprived of madder at a certain period, the tale was told 

 by the layers of uncolored bone which covered those that were colored, 

 and in time, the whole of the colored bone would disappear. M. 

 Flourens has since made valuable and varied use of his discovery. 

 He has employed it to show the influence of the mother upon her 

 offspring. Taking a sow with young, and freely administering madder 

 with her food, he found the little pigs all born with colored bones. 

 That the reader may fairly understand the surprising nature of this re- 

 sult, he should know that the communication between parent and off- 

 spring is of an extremely indirect kind. It is only through the blood; and 

 that blood does not simply flow from her arteries into the arteries of 

 the offspring, but circulates in a system of closed vessels, which lie 

 side by side with the closed vessels of the young one, and through the 

 walls of both these vessels, certain constituents of the blood ooze, and 

 among these constituents, apparently, the coloring matter. 



Nor do the marvels end here. M. Flourens has recently submitted to 

 the Academic des Sciences the result of his experiments on " nursing 

 mothers." These are so important in their suggestions to human moth- 

 ers, especially to those who suffer their children to be brought up by wet 

 nurses, or "by hand," that we deem it right to give it not only publici- 

 ty, but all the emphasis we can command. Let the facts first be stat- 

 ed. The litter of a sow was kept carefully separated from her, ex- 

 cept during the moments of sucking. She was fed on food with which 

 madder had been mingled. In a fortnight or three weeks, all the 

 bones of the little pigs were reddened. Remember that the milk of 

 such a sow is to the eye as white as that of any other sow ; nothing 



