200 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



He had gone into the laboratory late at night. Next 

 morning they found him — dead : and dead of senile 

 decay — ^grey-haired, shrivelled, atrophic 



Then of course the machine is smashed up ; and 

 Mr. Wells begins to write another book. 



I have spent so much time in frivolous discussion 

 of rhythm and size and commonplaces that I have 

 not pointed out another fundamental fact of biological 

 relativity — to wit, that we are but parochial creatures 

 endowed only with sense-organs giving information 

 about the agencies normally found in our own little 

 environment. Mind apart from the objects of mind 

 is the very Chimaera bombinating in vacuo. 



Out of all the ether waves we are sensitive to an 

 octave as light, and some few others as heat. X-rays 

 and ultra-violet destroy us, but we know nothing 

 about them until they begin to give us pain ; while 

 the low swell of Hertzian waves passes by and through 

 us harmless and unheeded. Electrical sense again 

 we have none. 



Imagine what it would be for inhabitants of another 

 planet where changes in Hertzian waves were the 

 central, pivotal changes in environment, where accord- 

 ingly life had become sensitive to * wireless ' and to 

 nought else save perhaps touch — imagine such beings 

 broadcast upon the face of the Earth. With a little 

 practice and ingenuity they would no doubt be able 

 to decipher the messages floating through our atmo- 



