MCGEE] ALTERNATION OF STATES Ind* 



miles ill search of it, aud acute enough to follow trails and indications. 

 Naturallj' the meager water-supply serves as a mechanism for sorting out 

 and preserving the strong and tlie acute, and for eliminating the weakly 

 aud the dull; and hence the tribe have develojied a faculty, or perhaps 

 a ])oteiitiality, of distinctive sort — the potentiality of i)roviding against 

 thirst-death by a reserve power iu the organism itself rather thau in 

 the form of mechanical devices such as characterize higher culture. 

 (i>uite similar are the relations to the resource of second importance, 

 i. e., ordinary food. Habituated to dispensing with storage and trans- 

 portation of their primary resource, and accustomed to finding food 

 wlienever forcted to sufficiently active effort to obtain it, the Seri have 

 never grasped that first principle of thrift expresse<l iu the accumula- 

 tion of food supplies; and .accordingly they intuitively rely ou success- 

 ful fishing or chase or searcli of vegetal edibles for sustenance, and 

 habitually delay eftbrt until they are stirred into activity by the pangs 

 of hunger. Naturally this improvidence serves as another mechanism 

 for perpetuating families of stored vitality, and especially those able 

 to i)revail over swift or strong or cunning (juarry by sustained vigor 

 and alertness after prolonged deprivation; and the effect of this mech- 

 anism, too, is to develop a reserve power in the organism itself, in lieu 

 of the material reserve made through thrift in higher culture. Similar 

 iu their consequences are the relations of the individual organisms to 

 the third industry of Serilaud, i. e., navigation of the gale-swept aud 

 tide-troubled waters. Even the buoyant balsa can not weather the 

 williwaws or ride the tiderips of El Infiernillo without exercise of the 

 utmost strength and skill on the part of the navigators ; while the often 

 j)ersistent storms may delay for days embarkation on voyages in quest 

 of fresh water or food. Naturally, the frecjuent delays and not infre- 

 quent perils of such navigation constitute a mecdianism for selecting 

 navigators possessed of reserve powers adequate to meet desperate 

 emergencies with vigor and judgment even after enervating waits for 

 wind aud tide, while those not so well endowed are either brought up 

 to standard in their hard training-school or expelled from their class by 

 drowning or dashing on the rocks, ua may happen ; so that the efiect of 

 this mechanism also is to preserve individuals aud perpetuate genera- 

 tions characterized by reserve power, and hence to develop latent 

 potentiality iu the tribe. Now, the normal product of these and other 

 uatural mechanisms immediately refiecting environmental conditions 

 is capacity for spurts, or foi intense functioning under severe stress, 

 despite accentuation of the stress by thirst or hunger or exhaustion, or Uy 

 all combiued — i. e., the eftect of habitat and habit is to produce precisely 

 such a somatic regimen as that so conspicuously displayed by the Seri 

 folk. So the intensified activity with long intervals of inertness, simu- 

 lating the habits of carnivorous and some other lower animals, and hence 

 suggesting primitive condition, would appear to be largely a jihyloge- 

 netically accjuired character expressing specific adjustment to environ- 

 ment. 



