Form and Color in Nature. 259 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 



DR. ROBERT G. ECCLES : 



The lecturer of the evening has given us an admirable statement, in 

 the main, of some of the ways in which form and color in Nature 

 have been evolved. He has also touched briefly upon the psycho- 

 logical principles involved in this process, in so far as it is related to 

 the animal world. The result of my own studies in this field has been 

 that I have broken with the idea broached by the lecturer, that the 

 sensation of feeling was the primary sensation developed in conscious 

 organisms. To my mind it would appear that taste would naturally 

 precede feeling, since the earliest activities of sentient creatures are 

 devoted mainly to the search for and appropriation of nourishment. 

 Even in the most primitive micro-organisms we observe a capacity for 

 distinguishing between that which is suitable for their food and that 

 which is not. The lecturer has well shown that the various parts of 

 Nature are so dovetailed together that the insect could not be what it 

 is without the flower, and vice versa. In illustration of this fact we 

 have the statement that when Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace was on 

 board a ship off the coast of Madagascar, a theretofore unknown in- 

 sect was brought to him, which he carefully examined, and then pro- 

 ceeded to sketch a flower which at that time had not been seen by any 

 white man, but which he declared must be somewhere on the island, 

 as this insect was peculiarly adapted for fertilizing such a flower. The 

 correctness of Mr. Wallace's views was afterward proved by the dis- 

 covery of a plant such as he described. I believe that an exact rela- 

 tion, which may be termed mechanical, exists throughout the universe, 

 so that if we were sufficiently intelligent, and could view all the forces 

 operating in the world from the nebula up, we could predict the exist- 

 ence of form and color in Nature exactly as we now perceive them. 



DR. LEWIS G. JANES: 



I think we must all agree that Mr. Potts has given us a suggestive 

 and admirable paper upon the topic of the evening. I was particular- 

 ly pleased with his clear statement of the grounds for a belief in a 

 Power transcending our modes of sense-perception. In regard to our 

 " five senses," as they are ordinarily enumerated, I think, while they 

 represent certain of the more obvious distinctions in our modes of con- 

 tact with the external world, it Is a mistake to assume a too rigid 



