14 ORGANIC BEHAVIOUR 
III. Corporate BEHAVIOUR 
The word “corporate” is here applied to the organic 
behaviour of cells when they are not independent and free, 
but are incorporated in the animal body, and act in relation to 
each other. If the behaviour of the individual cell during 
division impresses us with the subtle intricacy of organic 
processes, the behaviour of the growing cell-republic during 
the early stages of organic development must impress us no 
less forcibly. We place the fertilized egg of a hen in an incu- 
bator, and supply the requisite conditions of warmth, moisture, 
and fresh air. Before the egg is laid cell-division has begun. 
A small patch of closely similar cells has formed on the surface 
of the yolk. Further subdivision is then arrested until the 
warmth of incubation quickens again the patch into life. But 
when once thus quickened no subsequent temporary arrest is 
possible—life will not again lie dormant. If arrest there be 
it is that of death. And from that little patch of cells, which 
spreads further and further over the yolk, a chick is developed. 
Into the intricate technicalities of embryology this is not 
the place to enter. But it is a matter of common knowledge 
that, whereas we have to-day an egg such as we eat for break- 
fast, three weeks hence we shall have a bright active bird, a 
cunningly wrought piece of mechanism, and, more than that, a 
going machine. During this wonderful process the cellular 
constituents take on new forms and perform new functions, 
all in relationship to each other, all as part of one organic 
whole. Here bones are developed to form a skeletal frame- 
work, there muscles are constituted which shall render orderly 
movements possible ; feathers, beak, and claws take shape as 
products of the skin ; gut and glands prepare for future modes 
of nutrition ; heart and blood-vessels undergo many changes, 
some reminiscent of bygone and ancestral gill-respiration, 
some in relation to the provisional respiration of the embryo 
by means of a temporary organ that spreads out beneath the 
shell, some preparatory to the future use of the lungs,—some, 
again, related to the absorption of food from the yolk, others 
