Purpose and Intelligence exhibited by the Protozoa. 555 



remove it to a position a step higher in the evolutionary series 

 than its fellows. In like manner I consider that a Foraminifer 

 which selects a sponge-spicule of a certain length and uses it as a 

 " flying buttress " to keep it mouth-upwards, or as a " catamaran 

 spar " to prevent it from sinking in the ooze which stifles its less 

 "intelligent" congeners, affords evidence of such purposive intelli- 

 gence. Of however low an order it may be, that is the measure of 

 intelligence required by that organism to give it an advantage over 

 its fellows in the struggle for life. If the " catamaran spar " or 

 " flying buttress " were part of the organism itself, and not selected 

 and brought in from outside, the case would be merely parallel to 

 that of the deep-sea sponges of the " Crinorhiza " type described 

 by Professor Dendy,* but it is not. 



Another equally distinguished Zoologist has met me with the 

 argument that if my standpoint is a tenable one, I might with 

 equal reason claim purpose and intelligence as responsible for the 

 marvellous mechanical adaptations of certain vegetable seeds, by 

 which their transport to new ground is effectuated — as, for instance 

 (to quote a striking and familiar case), the parachutes of some of 

 the Tragopogons.f I entirely repudiated the suggestion in a 

 recent Lecture.^ To say that in the vast economy of Nature the 

 development of certain bodily attributes (being parts of the organism 

 itself) leads to the survival and propagation of the fittest, is to 

 enunciate the baldest of truisms, and such development in the 

 vegetable kingdom has nothing in common with the purpose and 

 intelligence displayed, exempli gratia, by those advanced indi- 

 viduals of the Foraminiferal genus Crithionina, which protect them- 

 selves with a hedge-hog coat of sharply-pointed sponge-spicules 

 from the depredations of parasitic worms. But even my genial 

 and distinguished critic, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, supplies me, in 

 another place, with a " Credo " which softens his kindly but in- 

 cisive criticisms. He says : — " I believe with Darwin that as the 



* A. Dendy, " Outlines of Evolutionary Biology." London, 1912, p. 420. 



t " If consciousness and freedom, purpose and intelligence, are to be ascribed 

 to lowH animals, I can see no reason why they should be withheld from the 

 vegetable kingdom." (Chalmers Mitchell, op. cit., p. 96.) He cites the tropisrn 

 of a planted bean whose shoot makes for the light, which tempts me to repeat the 

 reductio ad absurdum in which I recently indulged in connexion with this useful 

 vegetable. (Cf. Bibliography 7, p. 11.) At the same time, I am quite conscious 

 that a botanist pursuing this inquiry along the lines indicated by his especial 

 branch of science, must find remarkable data among his observations of many 

 tropical plants which make purposive use of extraneous materials occurring 

 in their environment. To quote familiar examples nearer home, one cannot but 

 be impressed by the actions of insectivorous plants, and the determined upward 

 thrust of a runner-bean tendril when a wire is stretched above it, and beyond its 

 reach when merely assisted by wind action. Mr. Clement Reid, F.R.S., has been 

 good enough to call my attention to some very remarkable phenomena afforded 

 by the highly specialized utilization of lime by the Characex, for the purpose 

 of stiffening their stems, his observations upon which "Behaviourists" must 

 await with eager anticipation. 



X Bibliography 7. 



2 q 2 



