94 DESIGN IN NATURE 



§ 12. The Effect of Environment Limited. 



The question of environment is in all cases an important one, but it must never be forgotten that enviroiiment 

 while it sHghtly modifies plants and animals, never alters their constitution ; it never makes a plant or an animal 

 other than what it is by original endowment. 



The hfe, and not the environment, makes plants and animals what they are. Environment never produces 

 a new organ in any organism ; neither can environment, as apart from hfe, goad plants and animals into activity. 



Plants and animals, once created and endowed with hfe, work out their own destinies on the hnes laid down 

 for them. They defend themselves against environment when that is inimical, but the initiative, in every 

 instance, comes from themselves. Environment is a dead thing. Plants and animals are hving things, and are 

 therefore superior to environment. It is a mistake to exalt environment over hfe, as is very frequently done. This 

 necessitates the assumption and aid of a set of artificial conditions which, I venture to assert, do not exist. It 

 requires us to take for granted that all the tissues of plants and animals, and plants and animals themselves, are 

 irritable, and that they can only act in response to outside stimulation. This view robs hfe of its characteristic 

 power, namely, the power of independent initiative. 



V 



§ 13 The Organic and Inorganic Kingdoms Reciprocate. 



In order fully to explain some of the more tangible, outstanding, and sahent features which obtain between the 

 inorganic and organic kingdoms, and which they have in common, it is necessary to refer very briefly to the sun, 

 solar heat, hght, the atmosphere, soil, moisture, winds, &c., in their relations to growth, development, and organic 

 movement. 



The sun is the great giver of heat and light, and on its presence the life of plants and animals practically 

 depends.-^ The sun, as far as our planet is concerned, is fixed, but as the earth rotates upon its axis every 24 hours, 

 and revolves round the sun every 365 days, it follows that the alternations of day and night, and the seasons — 

 spring, summer, autumn, and winter — so indispensable to the health and well-being of plants and animals — are 

 infallibly secured. The sun is directly connected with the production of winds, as these largely depend on changes 

 of temperature in certain localities, on the rarefaction and condensation of the air, irregular atmospheric pressure, 

 vacua or partial vacua, the presence or absence of moisture, &c. 



Winds are useful in carrying and diffusing heat and moisture, and in purifying the air which plants and animals 

 breathe. The organic and inorganic kingdoms are mutually interdependent. 



The organic substances are, so to speak, manufactured from the inorganic by plants and animals. A plant to 

 live must be supplied with soil, with water, and air. The soil contains saline matters, to which are generally added 

 decomposing substances, which furnish carbonic acid and ammonia. The water furnishes oxygen and hydrogen 

 in chemical combination ; and the air oxygen and nitrogen, and small but important quantities of carbonic acid 

 and ammonia. The plant is thus supplied with water, salts, carbonic acid, and ammonia. But the plant can 

 disintegrate the carbonic acid, and appropriate its carbon, which it can subsequently build up with oxvgen and 

 hydrogen into sugar, oil, and starch ; or it can combine carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen to form those 

 peculiar nitrogenous substances recently known as protoplasm. The sun lends its aid to the plant in these trans- 

 formations ; in fact, the heat of the sun enables the plant to separate the oxygen from the carbon and the nitrogen 

 from the hydrogen in the formation of sugar, oil, and starch. The heat of the sun is, marvellous to relate, not 

 lost in the process. It is stored up in the newly-formed sugar, oil, and starch ; and may be reconverted into heat 

 either by burning in the animal body or in an open fire. The heat thus obtained can, when collected, be made to 

 perform a definite amount of mechanical work. The physical and vital forces are correlated and interact. Sugar, 

 oil, and starch are manufactured by a vital chemistry, and, when once produced, are appropriated, with other 

 substances, as food by the Herbivora, and subsequently by the Carnivora and Omnivora. By vital, chemical, physical, 

 and other forces the inorganic material of the outer world is incorporated in the organic or inner world of plants 

 and animals. 



The animal, built up, as it were, indirectly from the inorganic and directly from the organic kingdoms by means 

 of the plant, reverses the operations of the latter. It returns to the inorganic world the substances abstracted from 

 it by the plant. Thus the animal takes the complex bodies produced by the plant, and oxidises or burns them. It 

 restores the carbon of these bodies to the atmosphere chiefly in the form of carbonic acid, the hydrogen as water 

 and the nitrogen, with the remainder of the carbon, as urea, to the soil. 



While these transformations are going on in the animal body, the tissues are being built up and conserved 



' " The life of men, animals, and plants could not continue if the sun had lost its high temperature, and with it its light " (Pouular scientifli. 

 lectures by Helniholtz, 1873.) ' ^ 



