A STUDY OF LOWER LIFE. 65 



a much higher place in the scale of animal society may also 

 exhibit reparative powers of a singular and extensive kind. A 

 star-fish, for example, need not in the slightest be disconcerted 

 by the loss of its rays. For these astronomical beings may be 

 met with on the sea-beach in the condition of grim old war- 

 riors who have left portions of their organisation on numerous 

 battle-fields, and possessing, it may be, but a single intact 

 ray, the other four rays having most likely served voracious 

 cod-fishes, as dainty, if somewhat tough, morsels. Or again, 

 the crabs and lobsters may be cited as examples of animals 

 to whom the loss of a limb less or more makes but little 

 difference. Indeed, the lobsters seem to part with even 

 the largest of their members on very slight provocation ; for 

 a sudden noise, such as the report of a cannon, has been 

 known to serve as the exciting cause of dismemberment. 

 Or lastly, to select animals of a higher grade still, it is well 

 known that our familiar eft or newt may lose half of its 

 tail without suffering any permanent loss ; the process of 

 reparation and growth in the star-fish, in the crab and 

 lobster, and in the newt, in due time providing new members 

 for old ones. Man, in one sense, may well envy his inferior 

 neighbours these reparative powers ; since even in the com- 

 paratively small matter of teeth, he has to place himself under 

 the tender mercies of the dentist in the event of loss, and 

 must view with hopeless gaze the disappearance of the last 

 joint of a finger or a toe. 



Although the physiologist is unable in the present state 

 of his science to explain the exact and intimate manner in 

 which the hydra and other animals reproduce their tissues, 

 we may, nevertheless, by a very homely simile, contrive to 

 gain a broad idea of the nature of these reparative powers. 

 We must thus firstly note that the process is simply one of 

 nutrition or nutritive growth, carried out to a high degree of 

 development. We are dealing, in fact, in such cases, with 

 an increase of the ordinary powers and processes whereby, 

 as we have already seen, the bodily waste is made good. But 

 at the same time, we observe that such powers and processes 



