The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)Spencer, Herbert
Science
The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Spencer, Herbert
Biology
speaking generally, the larger species are framed on the higher types. The
critical reader, who has mentally checked these statements in passing them,
has doubtless already seen that this relation is not a dependence of
organization on growth but a dependence of growth on organization. The
majority of Dicotyledons are smaller than some Monocotyledons; many
Monocotyledons are exceeded in size by certain Pteridophytes; and even
among Thallophytes, the least developed among compound plants, there are
kinds of a size which many plants of the highest order do not reach.
Similarly among animals. There are plenty of Crustaceans less than
_Actiniæ_; numerous reptiles are smaller than some fish; the majority of
mammals are inferior in bulk to the largest reptiles; and in the contrast
between a mouse and a well-grown _Medusa_, we see a creature that is
elevated in type of structure exceeded in mass by one that is extremely
low. Clearly then, it cannot be held that high organization is habitually
accompanied by great size. The proposition here illustrated is the converse
one, that great size is habitually accompanied by high organization. The
conspicuous facts that the largest species of both animals and vegetals
belong to the highest classes, and that throughout their various
sub-classes the higher usually contain the more bulky forms, show this
connexion as clearly as we can expect it to be shown, amid so many
modifying causes and conditions.
The relation between growth and supply of available nutriment, is too
familiar a relation to need proving. There are, however, some aspects of it
that must be contemplated before its implications can be fully appreciated.
Among plants, which are all constantly in contact with the gaseous, liquid,
and solid matters to be incorporated with their tissues, and which, in the
same locality, receive not very unlike amounts of light and heat,
differences in the supplies of available nutriment have but a subordinate
connexion with differences of growth. Though in a cluster of herbs
springing up from the seeds let fall by a parent, the greater sizes of some
than of others is doubtless due to better nutrition, consequent on
accidental advantages; yet no such interpretation can be given of the
contrast in size between these herbs and an adjacent tree. Other conditions
here come into play: one of the most important being, an absence in the one
case, and presence in the other, of an ability to secrete such a quantity
of ligneous fibre as will produce a stem capable of supporting a large
growth. Among animals, however, which (excepting some _Entozoa_) differ
from plants in this, that instead of bathing their surfaces the matters
they subsist on are dispersed, and have to be obtained, the relation
between available food and growth is shown with more regularity. The
_Protozoa_, living on microscopic fragments of organic matter contained in
the surrounding water, are unable, during their brief lives, to accumulate
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