262 



KNOWLEDGE 



[Jah. 27, 1882. 



terranean leaves tlio plant stores up tlie food -stuffs clal)0- 

 ratcd liy its grwn portions during the summer ; and there 

 thi-v lie tlie whole winter through, ready to send up a 

 tiowering stem early in the sucoeedini; spring. The material 

 in the old hulh i.s used in thus producing leaves and 

 blossoms at the beginning of the second or third season ; 

 liut fresh V)ulbs grow out anew from ita side, and in these 

 the plant once more stores up fresh material for the suc- 

 ceeding year's growth. 



Ti\e hyacinths which we keep in glasses on our mantel- 

 pieces represent such a reserve of three or four years' 

 accumulation. They have purposely been prevented from 

 Howering, in order to make them produce finer trusses of 

 bloom wlien tiiey are at length permitted to follow their 

 own free will. Thus the bulb contains material enough to 

 send up leaves and blossoms from its own resources ; and 

 it will do so even if grown entirely in the dark. In that 

 case the leaves will be pale yellow or faintly greenish, 

 because the true green jjigment, which is the active agent 

 of digestion, can only b(^ produced under the influence of 

 light : whereas the flowers will retain their proper colou)-, 

 because their pigment is always due to oxidation alone, and 

 is l)ut little dependent upon the rays of sunshine. Even 

 if grown in an ordinary room, away from the window, the 

 leaves seldom assume their proper deep tone of full green ; 

 thev are mainly dependent on the food-stufls laid by m the 

 bulb, and do but little active work on their own account. 

 After the hyacinth has flowered, the bulii is reduced to an 

 empty and flaccid niass of watery brown scales. 



Among all the lily kind, such devices for storing up 

 useful material, either in bulbs or in the ^ery similar organs 

 known as corms, are extremely common. As a consequence, 

 many of them produce unusually large and showy flowers. 

 Even among our native English lilies we can boa.st of such 

 beautiful blossoms as tlie fritillary, the wild hyacinth, the 

 meadow-saflron, and the two pretty squills ; while in our 

 gardens the tiger lilies, tulips, tuberoses, and many others 

 l)elong to the same liandsome bulbous group. Closely- 

 allied familie.s give us the bulb-bearing narcissus, daflbdil, 

 snowdrop, amaryllis, and (iuernsey lily : the crocus, gla- 

 diolus, iris, and corn-flag ; while the neighbouring tribe of 

 orchid.s, most of which ha\e tubers, proli.ibly produce more 

 ornamental flowers than any other faiTiily of plants in the 

 whole world. Among a widely-difl'crcnt group we get 

 other herbs which lay by rich stores of starch, or similar 

 nutritious substances, in thickened underground branches, 

 known as tubers ; such, for example, arc the potato and 

 the Jerusalem artichoke. Sometimes the root itself is the 

 storehouse for the ac(-umulated food-stufls, as in the 

 dahlia, the carrot, the radish, and the turnip. In all 

 these cases, the plant obviously deri\-es benefit from 

 the habit which it has acquired of hiding away its 

 reser\e fund bi-neath the ground, where it is much 

 less likely to be ilisco\-ered and eaten by its animal foes. 

 For it is obvious that these special reservoii-s of energetic 

 material, which the plant intends as food for its own flower 

 or for its future oll'spring, are exactly those parts which 

 animals will be likely unfairly to ap]>ropriate to their 

 personal use. What feeds a plant will feed a squirrel, a 

 mouse, a pig, or a man, just as well. Each requires just 

 the same free cilements, who.se combination with oxygen 

 may yield it heat and iriovement. Thus it happens that 

 the parts of plants which we human beings mainly use as 

 food-stvdis are ju.st the organs where starch has been laid bj- 

 for the plant's own domestic economy — seeds, as in the pea, 

 be.an, wheat, maise, barley, rice, or millet : tubers, as in the 

 potato and .Jerusalem artichoke ; corns, as in the yam or 

 tare : and roots, as in ari'owroot, turnip, parsnip and carrot. 

 !ti m'1 tlie-,1', .ind in many other case-s, the habit first set up 



by nature lias been sedulously encouraged and increased by 

 man's deliberate seh-ction. What man thus consciously 

 effects in a few generations, the survival of the fittest has 

 unconsciously effected through many long previous ages of 

 native development. 



BRAIN TROUBLES. 



P.VRTIAL Loss OF SpEECll. 



LET us consider next a case where the almost complete 

 loss of the power of fixing the attention was fol- 

 lowed by the partial loss of the power of expression, — a 

 sequence which would, we believe, be far more commonly 

 noticed than usual were all tlie circumstances of each case 

 carefully noted. The case also illustrates the danger re- 

 sulting from the endeavour to over-tax the powers of 

 nature : — " I was engaged this morning," says Dr. Alex- 

 ander Crichton, " with a great numb«r of people, who 

 followed each other quickly, and to each of whom I was 

 obliged to give my attention. I was also under the 

 necessity of writing much, but the subjects were various, 

 and of a trivial and uninteresting nature, and had no 

 connection the one with the other ; my attention, 

 therefore, was constantly kept on the stretch, and it 

 was continually shifting from one subject to another. At 

 last it became necessary that I should write a receipt for 

 some money I had received on account of the poor. T 

 seated myself, and wrote the two first words, but in a 

 moment found that I was incapable of proceeding, for I 

 could not recollect the words which belonged to the ideas 

 that were present in niy mind. I strained my attention 

 as much as possible, and tried to write one letter slowly 

 after the other, always having an eye in order to observe 

 whether they had the usual relationship to each other ; 

 but I remarked, and said to myself at the time, that the 

 characters I was writing were not those which I wished to 

 write, and yet I could not discover where the fault lay. 

 I therefore desisted, and partly by words and syllables, 

 and partly by gestures, I made the person who waited for 

 the receipt understand that he should leave me. For 

 about half-an-hour there reigned a kind of tumultuous 

 disorder of my senses, in which I was incapable of remark- 

 ing anything very particular, except that one series of 

 ideas forced themselves involuntarily into my mind." 

 The patient goes on to describe the various thoughts 

 which occurred to him at this time, and how he tested his 

 mental condition by thinking of the principles of religion, 

 conscience, and the future life, finding to his relief that these 

 principles he found " equally correct and fixed as before" 

 (a degree of assurance which some do not possess who ai-e 

 quite free from mental disorder). Passing over these 

 matters, as not bearing specially |on our subject, we find 

 that so soon as he tested his power of expressing his ideas, 

 either by spoken or by written words, he found that for 

 the time being the power was lost. "I endeavoured to 

 speak, in order to discover wliether I was capable of saying 

 anything that was connected ; but, although I made the 

 greatest eflbrts of attention, and proceeded with the utmost 

 caution, I perceived that I uniformly spoke other words 

 than I intended. My soul was at present as little master 

 of the organs of speech as it had been before of my hand 

 in writing. Thank (fod, this state did not continue verj- 

 long, for in nlxiut half-an-hour my head began to grow clearer, 

 the strange and tiresome ideas became less ■\-i\-id and 

 turbulent, and I could command my own thoughts with 

 less interruption." It is interesting to notice how the loss 

 of the power of expression was associated thus with con- 



