133 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Cookery 

 Coordination 



658. COOPERATION DEPENDS UP- 

 ON COMMUNICATION A Nervous System 

 a Quarter of a Mile Long The Most Perfect 

 Signal-service Triumphs. The success of 

 the cooperative principle, however, depends 

 upon one condition: the members of the 

 herd must be able to communicate with one 

 another. It matters not how acute the 

 senses of each animal may be, the strength 

 of the column depends on the power to 

 transmit from one to another what impres- 

 sions each may receive at any moment from 

 without. Without this power the sociality 

 of the herd is stultified; the army, having 

 no signaling department, is powerless as an 

 army. But if any member of the herd is 

 able by motion of head or foot or neck or 

 ear, by any sign or by any sound, to pass on 

 the news that there is danger near, each in- 

 stantly enters into possession of the facul- 

 ties of the whole. Each has a hundred eyes, 

 noses, ears. Each has a quarter of a mile of 

 nerves. Thus numbers are strength only 

 when strength is coupled with some power 

 of intercommunication by signs. If one herd 

 develops this signaling system and another 

 does not, its chances of survival will be 

 greater. The less equipped herds will be 

 slowly decimated and driven to the wall; 

 and those which survive to propagate their 

 kind will be those whose signal-service is 

 most efficient and complete. DRUMMOND 

 Ascent of Man, p. 156. ( J. P., 1900.) 



659. COOPERATION IN LOWER 

 LIFE A Colonial Animal Animal Resem- 

 bling Plant. Let us pick up a piece of this 

 " seaweed " and note its structure. You ob- 

 serve it resembles a fir-tree in miniature. 

 Its total length is about four inches, and 

 you note that it grows rooted and fixed like 

 any plant on oyster-shells and other objects. 

 Little wonder that it is called a sea-plant, 

 for its habits and its appearance certainly 

 lend support to that view of its nature. 

 Scan its structure, however, a little more 

 closely by aid of this lens, and you observe 

 that in place of leaves or flowers the 

 branches bear hundreds of little cups set in 

 each side. . . . Then your gaze alights 

 on a curious sight. You find that each of 

 these cups or cells is tenanted by a living 

 animal. . . . 



Our sea-fir is a compound or colonial ani- 

 mal, which numbers its members by the 

 hundred. It is something more, however. 

 It appears before us as a typical example of 

 a cooperative society. For the colony is 

 nourished, not by the labor of one, but by 

 the work of all its members. Each little 

 animal unit captures food and digests it, 

 and then delivers this nutriment over to the 

 general store or common fund, which is cir- 

 culating always through the hollow stem 

 and branches of the colony. From this com- 

 mon store each unit in turn draws its own 

 supply. 



There is perfect cooperation witnessed 

 here. No wrangling and quarreling, such as 



intervene in higher societies, exist. Lower 

 life knows nothing of the overweening am- 

 bition of the twos or threes over the aims of 

 the mass. There is no question or claim of 

 precedence in the sea-fir democracy. All is 

 harmony, equality, fraternity here; and the 

 currents of sea-fir life roll onwards undis- 

 turbed by the passions of higher existence. 

 ANDREW WILSON Glimpses of Nature, ch. 9, 

 p. 33. (Hum., 1892.) 



660. COOPERATION, UNCONSCIOUS 



Flowers and Insects Color and Fragrance 

 Attract for a Purpose Life Dependent on 

 Beauty and Sweetness. The vegetable world 

 is a world of still life. No higher plant has 

 the power to move to help its neighbor, or 

 even to help itself, at the most critical mo- 

 ment of its life. . . . The fertilizing 

 pollen grows on one part of the flower, the 

 stigma which is to receive it grows on an- 

 other, or it may be on a different plant. 

 But as these parts cannot move towards one 

 another, the flower calls in the aid of mov- 

 ing things. . . . Multitudes of flowers 

 without such aid could never seed at all. It 

 is to these cooperations that we owe all that 

 is beautiful and fragrant in the flower 

 world. To attract the insect and recom- 

 pense it for its trouble, a banquet of honey 

 is spread in the heart of the flower; and to 

 enable the visitor to find the nectar, the 

 leaves of the flower are made showy or con- 

 spicuous beyond all other leaves. To meet 

 the case of insects which love the dusk, 

 many flowers are colored white; for those 

 which move about at night and cannot see at 

 all, the night-flowers load the darkness with 

 their sweet perfume. The loveliness, the 

 variegations of shade and tint, the ornamen- 

 tations, the scents, the shapes, the sizes of 

 flowers, are all the gifts of cooperation. 

 The flower in every detail, in fact, is a 

 monument to the cooperative principle. 

 DRUMMOND Ascent of Man, p. 234. (J. P., 

 1900.) 



661. COORDINATION OF BODILY 

 ACTIVITIES Stronger Excitement Arouses a 

 Greater Number Unity of the Body. My 

 hand is lying quiescent on the table; some- 

 thing touches it lightly, a fly, or a feather; 

 there is a rush of activity to certain mus- 

 cles, and the hand is moved away. Well, 

 supposing the two things to be remote cause 

 and effect: the light contact cause, the mo- 

 tion effect: what may we suppose as to 

 the intermediate links? Unless the process 

 be something quite unique, there must be a 

 channel of communication between the "skin 

 of the hand and the group of muscles in the 

 shoulder, upper arm, and forearm, that 

 unite to withdraw the hand. Assuming the 

 concurrence of ten muscles, there must be a 

 ramifying thread of communication from 

 any point in the skin of the hand to all 

 those ten muscles. . . . 



Suppose now, instead of a light contact, 

 the hand is sharply pinched in the very 

 same place. . . . [Now] with the mere 



