256 i, eH OMS TL [ocTOBER 
It seems to me that biologists look on the nervous system in the 
same light as they do other parts and organs of the system. Now, 
while this may be true in relation, e.g., to the special senses, it must 
be remembered that the nervous system has also a general function, 
and must be looked at as belonging to and ministering to all other 
parts of the organism, so that the unity of all may be secured. Thus Dr, 
Gadow (in “ The Last Link”) says: “It is the physiological momentum 
which models the organism, and, by causing its adaptation, has pro- 
duced its organs by change of function”; and again, “ Each cell has a 
function, the more specialised the more intense it is.” He attributes 
adaptation to the disturbance of the equilibrium of the cell, and its” 
efforts to return to the status quo through increased activity. “But 
whilst this may be true, so far as it goes, yet it is plain that Dr. 
Gadow ignores the influence of the nervous system, and attributes the 
sole power of adaptation to the cells themselves, while the foregoing 
remarks on the nervous system, and other facts which I shall advance 
farther on, go to show that the power of adaptation does not belong 
to the cells themselves, but to the correlative influence of the nervous 
system. If we restrict ourselves to the view suggested by Dr. Gadow’s 
remarks, as in fact all Neo-Lamarckians seem to do, there is little 
wonder that the origin of correlative adaptations, as on the neck and 
other parts of the giraffe, presents a formidable difficulty, and appears 
almost inscrutable. The idea that life is due to some unknown and 
indefinable principle inherent in the cells themselves, pervades the 
whole of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s work on “ Biology,” and finds its highest ° 
presentation in the writings of Virchow, so prominently brought to our 
notice in his recent Huxley lecture. In his chapter on the dynamic 
elements of life (in the “ Principles of Biology”), Mr. Spencer men- 
tions the fact that an excised liver, and in a more forcible way the 
excised heart, of a cold-blooded animal continues to function after 
detachment from the organism, but does not attribute such action to 
the nervous ganglia connected therewith. It must be remembered 
that such a continuation of function occurs, as regards the heart in 
particular, only in the lower organisms, ¢.e. animals in which the 
nervous system and hence power is not so thoroughly centralised 
in the brain as in higher forms. In fact, there are more semi- 
independent ganglia dispersed through the organism. In the vegetable 
world we see a somewhat analogous distribution of independent centres, 
eg. in the Begonia. Prof. Waller (“ Text-Book of Physiology”) thus 
writes: “ Protoplasm is excitable. When any part of a lump of proto- 
plasm is excited, the lump moves. When many lumps of protoplasm 
are gathered together into a homogeneous mass, excitations and moye- 
ments may be transmitted from lump to lump in all directions. With 
higher organisation of the mass, differences of function and structure 
1 With proper precautions the excised heart of a mammal may continue beating for 
some time.—Ep. 
