8 Comparative Physiology and Psychology. [January, 
Dec. 3, 1873, wherein fission of the monad was described as being preceded by the 
absorption of one form by another. One monad would fix on the sarcode of another 
and the substance of the lesser or under one would pass into the upper one. In 
about two hours the merest trace of the lower one wis left, and in four hours fission 
and multiplication of the larger monad began. A full description of this interesting 
RENES may be found in the Monthly Microscopical Journal (London) for Uc- 
tober, 1877. 
Professor Leidy has asserted that the Amceba is a cannibal, whereupon Mr. J. 
Michels, in the American Journal op Microscopy, July, 1877, calls attention to Dal- 
linger and Drysdale’s contribution, and draws therefrom the inference that such can- 
nibalistic act of the Amceba is a reproductive one, or copulative, if the term is ad- 
missible. The editor (Dr. Henry Lawson) of the English journal, Oct., 1877, 
ig with Miche 
the numerous speculations upon the origin of the sexual appetite, such as 
isade s altruistic conclusion, which always seemed to me to be far fetched, I 
have encountered none that referred its derivation to hunger. At first glance such 
a suggestion seems ludicrous enough, but a little consideration will show that in thus 
fusing two desires we have still to get at the meaning and derivation of the primary 
one—desire for food. 
The cannibalistic Amceba may, as Dallinger’s monad certainly does, impregnate 
itself by eating one of its own kind, and we have innumerable instances among 
Algz and Protozoa of this sexual fusion appearing very much like ingestion, Crabs 
have been seen to confuse the two desires by actually eating portions of each other 
while Hoian and in a recent number of the Scientific American a Texan details 
the Mantis religiosa, female eating off the head of the male Mantis during conjuga- 
tion. Some of the female Arachnida find it necessary to finish the marital repast by 
devouring the male, who tries to scamper away from his fate. The bitings and even 
the embrace of the higher animals appears to have reference to this derivation. It 
isa physiological fact that association often transfers an instinct in an apparently 
outrageous manner, 
With quadrupeds it is undoubtedly olfaction that is most closely related to sexual 
desire and its reflexes, but not so in man. Ferrier diligently searches the region of 
the temporal lobe near its connection with the olfactory nerve for the seat of sexu- 
ality, but with the diminished importance of the smelling sense in man the faculty 
of sight has grown to vicariate olfaction; certainly the “ lust of the eye” is greater 
than that of other special sense organs among Bimana. 
In all animal life multiplication proceeds from moen and until a certain stage 
of growth, puberty, is reached, reproduction does not oc The complementary 
nature of growth and reproduction is observable in the ‘as size attained by some 
animals after castration. Could we stop the division of an Amoeba, a comparable 
increase in size would be effected. The grotesqueness of these views is due to their 
novelty, not to their being unjustifiable. 
While it would thus seem apparent that a primeval origin for both ingestive and 
sexual desire existed, and that each is a true hunger, the one being repressible and 
n higher animal life being subjected to more control than the other, the question 
then presents itself: What is hunger? It requires but little reflection to convince us 
of its potency in determining the destiny of nations and individuals and what a 
stimulus it is in animated creation. It seems likely that it has its origin in the 
atomic ages inagimate natare, a view monistic enough to please Haeckel and 
