298 CELL INTELLIGENCE THE CAUSE OP EVOLUTION 



scious intelligent acts. The cell knows what he wants 

 and what he is doing. As far as his experience in life has 

 been, he has only gone so far as to make for himself a 

 covering of some hard material. We must remember that 

 he not only picks up such grains of sand or glass as he 

 thinks necessary, but he knows how to change this ma- 

 terial into forms and substances with which he makes a 

 shell and covering for the young cell. 



You can see that he must have a knowledge of chem- 

 istry and also of the right proportions of mixing the mate- 

 rial with which he makes his armour. He must understand 

 how to dissolve the crude matter and with it make a mix- 

 ture that will harden into a shell after having first been 

 formed into the proper shape. He must perform all this 

 work, having in mind and in view placing therein of the 

 young cell as soon as he gets the new structure completed. 

 Every act in this performance requires the same purpose 

 and foresight as similar actions in man. 



Mr. Binet also gives the following interesting descrip- 

 tion of the action of the male cell in animals : 



"Let us now follow the spermatozoid in its journey to 

 the ovule. It is known that the road it has to travel in 

 certain instances is extremely long. Thus in the hen the 

 oviduct measures 60 centimeters, and in large mammifers 

 the passages have a length of from 25 to 30 centimeters. 

 We might ask ourselves how such frail and minute crea- 

 tures come by a power of locomotion great enough to 

 enable them to traverse so long a path. But observation 

 discloses the fact that they are able to overcome obstacles 

 quite out of proportion to their size. Henle has seen 

 spermatozoids carry along with them masses of crystals 

 ten times larger than themselves without appreciably les- 

 sening their speed. F. A. Pouchet has seen them carry 

 bunches of from 8 to 10 blood globules. M. Balbiani has 



