COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY. 139 



COLONIES AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY. (T.) 



By JAMES COLLIER. 



WE may conceive a country, with its colonies and dependencies 

 grouped round it at unequal distances and in different direc- 

 tions, as a giant organism, which has its laws of growth' and develop- 

 ment, its phases of expansion, activity and decay, like all other 

 organisms. We see it enlarging in mass, but to the last remaining 

 amorphous, or assimilable to no known forms. We observe the heart 

 and brain fostering, helping and sometimes hindering, directing, con- 

 trolling and guarding the evolution of the nearer or remoter portions. 

 We perceive on scrutiny threads of relationship being woven, new 

 nervous, muscular and circulatory systems being developed, which 

 connect the extremities with the center and unite both into an organic 

 whole. We are struck at times with the rupture of the mass and the 

 permanent separation of parts of it; at times we are impressed by 

 an unexpected augmentation in previously unknown areas, as if to 

 repair the loss of the old. We witness the extremities reacting on the 

 original nucleus, to some extent remodeling the heart and brain and 

 thus creating a type of organism unprecedented in Nature. And we 

 find that of a limited number of such colossal types, ever battling for 

 predominance, one or another gains an ascendency and the rest are 

 reduced to a secondary rank, or, being lopped of their colonial ex- 

 tensions, cease to be world-wide organisms and shrink into the merely 

 national organisms from which they sprang. 



Snails put out their feelers as they go. The bolder insects and 

 the more adventurous birds fly small or great distances in search of a 

 feeding ground; some are carried out to sea, and become involuntary 

 'discoverers' of new lands.* The social organism puts out its feelers 

 and extends in mass. The community pushes out its scouts, and a 

 portion of it, at longer or shorter intervals, follows their lead. Thus 

 the mother country discovers many of the territories it colonizes. 

 Cadiz was unknown to the Eastern world till a Phoenician merchant 

 ship was blown thither. The West African coast and the mouth of 

 the Rhone were discovered by the Carthaginians. Libya (west of 

 Egypt) was a terra incognita to the Greeks till a Greek sailor who had 

 been driven on its inhospitable coast informed the emigrant Theraaans 

 of its existence. The Portuguese discovered the Azores. The Span- 



* Examples of insects aie given in Darwin's 'Journal,' and of birds in Wallace's 'Malay 

 Archipelago.' 



