further, for the reader will easily fill out the remainder of the picture
for himself. Man is but an immense colony of cells, in which the division
of labor, together with the centralization of the nervous system, has
reached its highest limit. It is chiefly to this that his superiority is
due; a superiority so great, as regards certain functions of the brain,
that he may be excused for having denied his humbler relatives, and dreamed
that, standing alone in the centre of the universe, sun, moon, and stars,
were made for him."
Let us learn from the same writer how both eyes of the flounder get, quite
unintentionally, on the same side of the head. The writer makes much of this
case (see p. 306), and we are not disposed to pass it by:
"A similar application may be made to the Pleuronecta. Presumably, these
fishes had adopted their peculiar mode of swimming long before the position
of their eyes became adapted to it. A spontaneous variation occurred,
consisting in the passage of one eye to the opposite side of the head; and
this variation afforded its possessors such increased facilities of sight
that in the course of time the exception became the rule. But the
remarkable point is, that the law of heredity not only preserved the
variation itself, but the date of its occurrence; and that, although for
thousands of years the adult Pleuronecta have had both eyes on the same
side, the young still continue during their earlier development to exhibit
the contrary arrangement, just as if the variation still occurred
spontaneously."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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