122 CELL INTELLIGENCE THE CAUSE OF EVOLUTION 



tentacles provided with powerful suckers, which hang on 

 to any animal that touches them. It does not look like 

 an animal, and for that season it is able to get near fish 

 and other animals on which it feeds. The scheme of 

 throwing ink in the face of its pursuers is not the only 

 wonderful invention of the cells that build this individual. 

 The most wonderful is its power to chaange its color at 

 will. If its surroundings are green, it will change from 

 black to green, etc. How is it able to do this? It has 

 been demonstrated that the cells in the skin get a picture 

 of the outside surroundings through the eye, that the 

 skin cells have several color shades on hand and that they 

 stick those tints up to the surface of the skin, which will 

 produce the shade desired. It shows how the cells in the 

 individual communicate and work with each other. 

 The skin cells gets a picture of the outside from the 

 brain cells, who must first get it through the eye. If you 

 injure his eye or the nerve leading to the eye, he is not 

 able to change his color. This invention of changing his 

 color at will so as to be able to escape enemies or get 

 closer to its victim is certainly wonderful. How long the 

 cells struggled with the elements and enemies before they 

 discovered and perfected these inventions to aid them in 

 the battle of life* we can only guess ; but from the time it 

 first discovered the advantages of working together in a 

 social community until it perfected the eye, next the ink 

 scheme and the power to change color, it must have been 

 ages. The eye must have been perfected first, or else it 

 could not know the effect of roiling the water with ink, 

 or of changing its color to correspond to surroundings. 



We might consider now this wonderful structure 

 known as the torpedo ray, or sting ray, as it is sometimes 

 called. This is a fish that kills its victims with an elec- 

 tric shock. Here is a colony of cells that have built a 



