470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



really to eat and drink, thougli quite devoid of any special organs for 

 eating or drinking. 



The particular point to which I wish to draw attention here, how- 

 ever, is this : that even the very simplest and most primitive animals 

 do discriminate somehow between what is eatable and what isn't. 

 The amoeba has no eyes, no nose, no mouth, no tongue, no nerves of 

 taste, no special means of discrimination of any kind ; and yet, so 

 long as it meets only grains of sand or bits of shell, it makes no effort 

 in any way to swallow them ; but the moment it comes across a bit 

 of material fit for its food, it begins at once to spread its clammy 

 fingers around the nutritious morsel. The fact is, every part of the 

 amoeba's body apparently possesses, in a very vague form, the first 

 beginnings of those senses which in us are specialized and confined to 

 a single spot. And it is because of the light which the amoeba thus 

 incidentally casts upon the nature of the specialized senses in higher 

 animals that I have ventured once more to drag out of the private life 

 of his native pond that already too notorious and obtrusive rhizopod. 



With us lordly human beings, at the extreme opposite end in the 

 scale of being from the microscopic jelly-specks, the art of feeding and 

 the mechanism which provides for it have both reached a very high 

 state of advanced perfection. We have slowly evolved a tongue and 

 palate on the one hand, and French cooks a,ixd pate defoie gras on the 

 other. But while everybody knows practically how things taste to 

 us, and which things respectively we like and dislike, comparatively 

 few people ever recognize that the sense of taste is not merely in- 

 tended as a source of gratification, but serves a useful purpose in our 

 bodily economy, in informing us what we ought to eat and what to 

 refuse. Paradoxical as it may sound at first to most people, nice 

 things are, in the main, things that are good for us, and nasty things 

 are poisonous or otherwise injurious. That we often practically find 

 the exact contrary the case (alas !) is due, not to the provisions of 

 nature, but to the artificial surroundings in which we live, and to the 

 cunning way in which we flavor up unwholesome food, so as to de- 

 ceive and cajole the natural palate. Yet, after all, it is a pleasant gos- 

 pel that what we like is really good for us, and, when we have made 

 some small allowances for artificial conditions, it is in the main a true 

 one also. 



The sense of taste, which in the lowest animals is diffused equally 

 over the whole frame, is in ourselves and other higher creatures con- 

 centrated in a special part of the body, namely, the mouth, where the 

 food about to be swallowed is chewed and otherwise prepared before- 

 hand for the work of digestion. Now, it is, of course, quite clear that 

 some sort of supervision must be exercised by the body over the kind 

 of food that is going to be put into it. Common experience teaches 

 us that prussic acid and pure opium are undesirable food-stuffs in large 

 quantities ; that raw spirits, petroleum, and red lead should be spar- 



