428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



with its fellows, is talking to itself. One cannot help wondering what 

 would happen if one could work some kind of magic spell and enable 

 the lugworm to detect the water currents of its neighbors. It is not 

 conceivable that the worms would resonate, as it were, to the same 

 pattern — that moods would spread across a lugworm beach, just as 

 they do through a flock of jackdaws? The mechanical effect on the 

 beach of synchronizing the efforts of all these hundreds of thousands 

 of little diggers might be formidable, but it would lead me too far 

 astray to pursue that line of thought. 



I have already wandered quite far enough since my lecture began — 

 from worms to birds, from fact to the wildest speculation. On such 

 an occasion as this the speaker may be allowed to relax that caution 

 which normally characterizes a scientific address, and I have taken 

 the opportunity to make what is really a declaration of faith. I be- 

 lieve that the innate morphology of animal behavior is of far wider 

 importance than is generally realized — or, at least, generally stated — 

 for the principles of what I have said are already familiar furniture in 

 the minds of many of my hearers. 



The zoologist is always concerned with organization. At whatever 

 level he studies his animals, he finds intricate and fascinating pat- 

 terns — in their gross anatomy, in their histology, even in their molecu- 

 lar structure. He learns also that the living body is in a state of cease- 

 less change — moving, growing, metabolizing, wearing out, attempting 

 to repair itself. The cessation of these processes is death ; life is their 

 control; and just as the living animal patterns the molecules that con- 

 stitute its body into a characteristic anatomy as exactly as the assaults 

 and restraints of the environment will allow, it patterns the events 

 that constitute its behavior. It organizes itself elaborately and beauti- 

 fully — more so, I think, than has yet been revealed to us — not only in 

 space but also in time. 



NOTES ON THE LITERATURE 



The first part of the lecture is based on the following original 

 papers : 



Abenicola 



Feeding cycle : G. P. Wells, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 14, p. 117, 1937. Defecation 



cycle : G. P. Wells, Journ. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U. K, vol 28, pp. 447, 465, 1949. 

 Review: G. P. Wells, Symp. Soc. Exp. Biol., vol. 4, p. 127, 1950. Additional 



details : G. P. Wells and E. B. Albrecht, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 28, p. 41, 1951. 



G. P. Wells, Journ. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U. K., vol. 32, p. 51, 1953; Quart. 



Journ. Micr. ScL, vol. 95, p. 251, 1954. 

 Nervous system of the esophagus: M. Whitear, Quart. Journ. Micr. ScL, vol. 



94, p. 293, 1953. 

 Action of changes in bathing medium on the esophagus : G. P. Wells and I. 0. 



Ledingham, Journ. Exp. Biol., vol. 17, pp. 337, 353, 1940 ; vol. 19, p. 176, 1942. 



