The Dawn of Reason; or, Mental Traits in the Lower AnimalsWeir, James, Jr.
Science
The Dawn of Reason; or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals
Weir, James, Jr.
Psychology, Comparative; Reason
"But by far the greatest feat of this kind that ever presented itself to
me was the catching of a young _acineta_ by an old sluggish _amoeba_,
as the former left its parent; this took place as follows:
"In the evening of the 2d of June, 1858, in Bombay, while looking
through a microscope at some _Euglenæ_, etc., which had been placed
aside for examination in a watch-glass, my eye fell upon a stalked and
triangular _acineta_ (_A. mystacina?_), around which an _amoeba_ was
creeping and lingering, as they do when they are in quest of food. But
knowing the antipathy that the _amoeba_, like almost every other
infusorian, has to the tentacles of the _acineta_, I concluded that the
_amoeba_ was not encouraging an appetite for its whiskered companion,
when I was surprised to find that it crept up the stem of the _acineta_,
and wound itself round its body.
"This mark of affection, too much like that frequently evinced at the
other end of the scale, even where there is mind for its control, did
not long remain without interpretation. There was a young _acineta_,
tender and without poisonous tentacles (for they are not developed at
birth), just ready to make its exit from its parent, an exit which takes
place so quickly, and is followed by such rapid bounding movements of
the non-ciliated _acineta_, that who would venture to say, _a priori_,
that a dull, heavy, sluggish _amoeba_ could catch such an agile little
thing? But the _amoebæ_ are as unerring and unrelaxing in their grasp
as they are unrelenting in their cruel inceptions of the living and the
dead, when they serve them for nutrition; and thus the _amoeba_,
placing itself around the ovarian aperture of the _acineta_, received
the young one, nurse-like, in its fatal lap, incepted it, descended from
the parent, and crept off. Being unable to conceive at the time that
this was such an act of atrocity on the part of the _amoeba_ as the
sequel disclosed, and thinking that the young _acineta_ might yet
escape, or pass into some other form in the body of its host, I watched
the _amoeba_ for some time afterwards, until the tale ended by the
young _acineta_ becoming divided into two parts, and thus in their
respective digestive spaces ultimately becoming broken down and
digested."[31]
[31] Carter, _Annals of Natural History_, 3d Series, 1863, pp. 45, 46;
quoted also by Romanes, _Animal Intelligence_, pp. 20, 21.
In the discussion of conscious and unconscious mind, I called attention
to the marginal bodies of the nectocalyx of the jelly-fish. These bodies
in the "covered-eyed" species are protected by hoods of gelatinous
tissue; in the naked-eyed species the hoods are absent. The marginal
bodies in both species are practically identical as far as general
make-up is concerned, being composed of an accumulation of
brightly-colored pigment-cells, embedded in which are several minute
clear crystals. Nerve-fibres connect these bodies with the sensorium
("nerve-ring").
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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