In view of these results, it occurred to me as an interesting
experiment to try the effect on the natural rhythm of exhausting a
ganglion thus situated, by throwing in a great number of shocks at
the other end of the strip. I found that after five hundred single
shocks had been thrown in with a rapidity almost sufficient to
tetanize the strip, immediately after the stimulation ceased, the
natural rhythm of the ganglion, which had previously been twenty
in the minute, fell to fourteen for the first minute, eighteen for
the second, and the original rate of twenty for the third. In such
experiments the diminution of rate is most conspicuous during the
first fifteen or thirty seconds of the first minute. Sometimes
there are no contractions at all for the first fifteen seconds
after cessation of the stimulating process, and in such cases the
natural rhythm, when it first begins, may be as slow as one-half
or even one-quarter its normal rate. All these effects admit of
being produced equally well, and with less trouble, by faradizing
the strip, when it may be even better observed how prolonged may be
the stimulation, without causing anything further than such slight
exhaustion of the ganglion as the above results imply.[19]
[19] In this description I have everywhere adopted the current
phraseology with regard to ganglionic action--a phraseology which
embodies the theory of ganglia supplying interrupted stimulation.
But although I have done this for the sake of clearness, of
course it will be seen that the facts harmonize equally well with
the theory of continuous stimulation, to which I shall allude
further on.
_Naked-eyed Medusæ._
It would be impossible to imagine movements on the part of so
simple an organism more indicative of physiological harmony than
are the movements of Sarsia. One may watch several hundreds of
these animals while they are swimming about in the same bell-jar
and never perceive, as in the covered-eyed Medusæ, the slightest
want of ganglionic co-ordination exhibited by any of the specimens.
Moreover, that the ganglionic co-ordination is in this case
wonderfully far advanced is proved by the fact of members of this
genus being able to steer themselves while following a light, as
previously described.[20]
[20] Removing the manubrium does not interfere with this steering
action; but if any considerable portion of the margin is excised,
the animal seems no longer able to find the beam of light, even
though one or more of the marginal bodies be left _in situ_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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