APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1898. 

 THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 



By JAMES COLLIER. 

 I.— THE GENESIS OF COLONIES. 



NOWHERE is tlie analogy between tlie individual and the soci- 

 ety more applicable than at the beginnings of both. Though, 

 as research advances, it will probably be found instructive at the 

 very summit of the scale,* it is most illuminative at the base, where 

 the individual and social organisms are often indistinguishable. It 

 is then perceived to be an identity which binds together two widely 

 separated provinces of knowledge. So close is the parallelism in 

 the lower ranges that biological statements have only to be translated 

 into sociological terms. The genesis of individuals is the key to the 

 genesis of societies, and of those special societies named colonies. 

 The biology of reproduction is the foundation of what may be styled 

 coloniology. 



Reproduction in its earliest or sexless form is discontinuous 

 growth. Species can be arranged in an ascending series so as to 

 exhibit an insensible transition from mere expansion of the parent 

 mass to the budding off of new individuals. In certain species, like 

 the sponge, the two processes are identical, and no true line of 

 division can be drawn. 



Colonization is the national mode of self-reproduction, and here 

 again extension and multiplication are inseparable. Continuous 

 population, remarks Grote, was not the law of the ancient world. 

 A Greek city-state did not grow by expansion, as a modern state 

 does; it grew only by multiplication. It did not annex adjacent 



* See a recent treatise: Conscience et volonte sociales. By J. Novicow. Paris, 1896. 

 VOL. LIII. — 21 



