FULLER Q UO TA TIONS FROM ' ZOONOMIA .' 2 1 / 



it may bend into a ring, and thus form the beginning 

 of a tube. Such moving filaments and such rings are 

 described by those who have attended to microscopic 

 animalcules. This living ring may now embrace or 

 absorb a nutritive particle of the fluid in which it 

 swims ; and by drawing it into its pores, or joining it by 

 compression to its extremities, may increase its own 

 length or crassitude, and by degrees the living ring may 

 become a living tube. 



" With this new organization, or accretion of parts, 

 new kinds of irritability may commence ; for so long as 

 there was but one living organ it could only be sup- 

 posed to possess irritability ; since sensibility may be 

 conceived to be an extension of the effect of irritability 

 over the rest of the system. These new kinds of irrita- 

 bility and of sensibility in consequence of new organi- 

 zation appear from variety of facts in the more mature 

 animals ; thus .... the lungs must be previously formed 

 before their exertions to obtain fresh air can exist ; the 

 throat, or oesophagus, must be formed previous to the 

 sensation or appetites of hunger and thirst, one of which 

 seems to reside at the upper end and the other at the 

 lower end of that canal." * ; 



It seems to me Dr. Darwin is wrong in supposing 

 that the organ must have preceded the power to use 

 it. The organ and its use the desire to do and the 

 power to do have always gone hand in hand, the 

 organism finding itself able to do more according as it 

 advanced its desires, and desiring to do more simulta- 

 neously with any increase in power, so that neither 

 * ' Zoonoinia/ vol. i. p. 497. 



