615 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Seed-dispersal 

 Selection 



ting in similar chambers at a depth of 36 

 and 41 inches, and these were lined or paved 

 with little pebbles about as large as mus- 

 tard-seeds; and in one of the chambers 

 there was a decayed oat-grain, with its husk. 

 Hensen likewise states that the bottoms of 

 the burrows are lined with little stones; 

 and where these could not be procured, 

 seeds, apparently of the pear, had been used, 

 as many as fifteen having been carried down 

 into a single burrow, one of which had ger- 

 minated. We thus see how easily a botanist 

 might be deceived who wished to learn how 

 long deeply buried seeds remained alive, if 

 he were to collect earth from a considerable 

 depth, on the supposition that it could con- 

 tain only seeds which had long lain buried. 

 It is probable that the little stones, as well 

 as the seeds, are carried down from the sur- 

 face by being swallowed; for a surprising 

 number of glass beads, bits of tile and of 

 glass were certainly thus carried down by 

 worms kept in pots; but some may have 

 been carried down within their mouths. The 

 sole conjecture which I can form why worms 

 line their winter quarters with little stones 

 and seeds, is to prevent their closely coiled- 

 up bodies from coming into close contact 

 with the surrounding cold soil; and such 

 contact would perhaps interfere with their 

 respiration, which is effected by the skin 

 alone. DARWIN Formation of Vegetable 

 Mould, ch. 2, p. 33. (Hum., 1887.) 



3041. SEEDS, PROFUSION OF 



Abundance in Nature. In producing seeds 

 Nature is generous, often lavish. Most seeds 

 are eaten by animals, or fall in places where 

 they cannot germinate and produce plants, 

 or fall in such numbers that most of them 

 in growing are crowded and starved to death. 

 A very small proportion fall on good ground, 

 and succeed in becoming fruiting plants. A 

 large plant of purslane produces one million 

 two hundred and fifty thousand seeds; a 

 patch of daisy fleabane, three thousand seeds 

 to each square inch of space covered by a 

 plant. The genuine student will ncrt be sat- 

 isfied till he has selected several different 

 kinds of plants and counted, or estimated, 

 the number of seeds produced by each, or the 

 number of seeds furnished to the area cov- 

 ered by one or by several plants. BEAL Seed 

 Dispersal, ch. 7, p. 78. (G. & Co., 1898.) 



3042. SEEING WITHOUT PERCEIV- 

 ING Habitual Acts Automatic Not Recog- 

 nized by Consciousness Nor Held in Mem- 

 ory. When we move about in a room with 

 the objects in which we are quite familiar, 

 we direct our steps so as to avoid them, 

 without being conscious, what they are, 

 or what we are doing; we see them, as 

 we easily discover if we try to move about 

 in the same way with our eyes shut, but we 

 do not perceive them, the mind being fully 

 occupied with some train of thought. In like 

 manner, when we go through a series of fa- 

 miliar acts, as in dressing or undressing 

 ourselves, the operations are really auto- 



matic; once begun, we continue them in a 

 mechanical order, while the mind is think- 

 ing of other things; and if we afterward 

 reflect upon what we have done, in order to 

 call to mind whether we did or did not omit 

 something, as for instance to wind up our 

 watch, we cannot satisfy ourselves except 

 by trial, even tho we had actually done what 

 we were in doubt about. It is evident, in- 

 deed, that in a state of profound reverie or 

 abstraction a person may, as a somnambu- 

 list sometimes does, see without knowing 

 that he sees, hear without knowing that 

 he hears, and go through a series of acts 

 scarcely, if at all, conscious of them at the 

 time, and not remembering them afterward. 

 MAUDSLEY Body and Mind, lect. 1, p. 23. 

 (A., 1898.) 



3043. SELECTION AMONG SIMUL- 

 TANEOUS POSSIBILITIES Mind Works as 

 a Sculptor on Marble The Statue in the 

 Stone. The mind is at every stage a theater 

 of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness 

 consists in the comparison of these with 

 each other, the selection of some, and the 

 suppression of the rest by the reenforcing 

 and inhibiting agency of attention. The 

 highest and most elaborated mental prod- 

 ucts are filtered from the data chosen by the 

 faculty next beneath, out of the mass offered 

 by the faculty below that, which mass in 

 turn was sifted from a still larger amount 

 of yet simpler material, and so on. The 

 mind, in short, works on the data it receives 

 very much as a sculptor works on his block 

 of stone. In a sense the statue stood there 

 from eternity. But there were a thousand 

 different ones besides it, and the sculptor 

 alone is to thank for having extricated this 

 one from the rest. JAMES Psychology, vol. 

 i, ch. 9, p. 288. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



3044. SELECTION A PROPERTY OF 

 LIFE Each Organ and Tissue Takes from the 

 Blood Its Own Material A Mystery of Sci- 

 ence. Each tissue . . . takes from the 

 common stream of nourishment the materi- 

 als necessary for the building-up of new 

 substance. From the blood bone selects the 

 materials necessary for the formation of new 

 bone; nerve from the same source gathers 

 matter for the production of new nerve-tis- 

 sue; muscle therefrom elaborates new mus- 

 cle; cells of wondrously diverse kind, like 

 buyers of many nations in a common mar- 

 ket, select from the blood the special food 

 or pabulum suited to their wants, and there- 

 from manufacture new cells in short, the 

 process of growth in man and in all animals 

 of higher grade exemplifies the results of 

 many varied operations effected by the tis- 

 sues and organs of the body upon the com- 

 mon material offered to them in the shape 

 of the nutrient blood. How this property 

 of " selection " is exercised, or what is its 

 exact nature, science knows not as yet. 

 But the possession of this remarkable prop- 

 erty of selecting and using appropriate ma- 

 terial in the actions of life, explain it how 



