1^2 ANDREWS. 



phenomena, i.e., the selection by the substance of its own 

 specific environment. 



[125] This becomes plainer if we turn for a time to consid- 

 eration of some ways by which the living substance evades, 

 outwits, or defies external environment. In one class of such 

 phenomena, the substance, finding external conditions adverse, 

 simply sends them for the time being "to Coventry," isolating 

 itself more or less completely from all immediate intercourse 

 with them. In the lower forms, even in some so highly organ- 

 ized as rotifers, this action is shown by the habit of encysting. 

 In the higher forms, hibernation expresses the independence of 

 the substance, and in both phenomena the substance shows that 

 it is capable of withdrawing into itself where, by aid of its 

 specific internal conditions, it can sustain the frown of circum- 

 stances. Even the rhythmic nature of ingestion acts — which 

 in different organisms cover widely different intervals — is here 

 a most significant phenomenon, and the torpid state of the 

 boa-constrictor (and of many savage peoples) after infrequent 

 meals is but an exaggeration of substance habit which links 

 these acts more clearly together with those whose object more 

 obviously is to render the organism for variable periods inde- 

 pendent of its external environment. In many cases and for 

 variable periods, protoplasm itself is used to protect an organ- 

 ism from external conditions, or to render it independent of 

 these. The containing body purveys for and shelters, albeit 

 often unconsciously or unwillingly, the contained body. This is 

 the meaning of parasitism. The same thing is also expressed 

 in most reproduction phenomena, notably in fertilization. Here 

 again the thing of greatest importance to substance life and sub- 

 stance habit of both host and guest in the dual life is their own 

 internal conditions. In such artificial phenomena as grafts of 

 areas and organs also, the substance seems often to live a truly 

 parasitic life, continuing rather to select its environment in ac- 

 cordance with its own accustomed habit, than to yield to the mass 

 •character of the host. Curious induced differences in habit 

 of local deposit of reserve material, shown at times in regen- 

 eration, may mean a use of inclusions prepared for different 

 emergencies, or, abnormal secretive function in the substance. 



