MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
In non-green plants like the Indian pipe and mushrooms the breathing of oxygen and the excretion of carbon dioxide are as in the animal.
This is true also of green plants in darkness and even in the light of all parts of green plants except the chlorophyll-bodies.
These constitute a sort of extra mechanism, enabling green plants to make their own carbohydrate food.
Imagine a higher animal with an attachment for turning the carbon dioxide and water excreted
back to starch usable as food and the comparison of the green plant and the animal would be complete.
The Science: History of the Universe, Volume 5. Edited by Francis Rolt-Wheeler.
Biology. Chapter 10. Morphology and Embryology, Part One.
The facts of biology which admit of adequate explanation only in connection with the theory of descent
are grouped by Romanes and other writers on organic evolution under the heads of morphology, embryology, classification,
paleontology, distribution and domestication.
In all these lines the facts are drawn together by a strong thread of unity.
There are numberless similarities and correlations and surprising uniformities.
The great variety of life as exhibited in the countless species of plants and animals has been referred to, and yet, great as this variety is,
there are, after all, only a few types of structure among all animals and plants, some three or four or eight or ten general modes of development,
and all the rest are modifications from these few types.
It is, moreover, true that all living forms are but series of modifications and extensions of one single plan of structure.
All have the same ultimate substance
the mysterious semi-fluid network of protoplasm, which is, so far as is known, the physical basis of all life;
and the equally mysterious nuclear substance or chromatin
which in some fashion presides over all the movements of the protoplasm and is the physical basis of the phenomena of heredity.
The same laws of heredity, variability and of response to outside stimulus hold in all parts of the organic world.
All organisms have the same need of reproduction.
All are forced to make concession after concession to their surroundings, and in these concessions all progress in life consists.
And at last each organism or each alliance of organisms must come to the greatest concession of all, which is called death.
The unity in life, then, is not less a fact than is life's great diversity.
Whatever emphasis is laid upon the diversity of life, the essential unity of all organisms must not be forgotten.
An examination of the facts in each of the lines of evidence makes it clear
that the only reasonable explanation for the existence of a fundamental unity in organic life
is the theory of descent -- i.e., that similarities are due to blood relationship and that differences come from adaptive modifications.
The facts adduced from morphology, being the result of researches into the structure of adult animals and plants,
lead to a preview of certain principles of adaptation, necessary for their interpretation.
First, it must be noted that some structures are not non-adaptive, that is, do not change to fit changed habits or conditions of life.
Such structures or organs are most often found internally.
For illustration: a change in the locomotive habit of a bird from that of flying to that of an ostrich
is associated with an adaptive modification of locomotor structures, legs and wings,
but not in any striking way is there change in the internal organs.
Internal organs may persist unchanged and hence they offer good guides to classification.
On the other hand, external structures are likely to undergo adaptation when habits or conditions of life change.
Hence, as Jordan has said, "the inside of an animal tells the real history of its ancestry; the outside tells us only where its ancestors have been."
In the second place, it must be noted that adaptations to similar conditions may result in superficial resemblances.
For example, there is a superficial resemblance between the wing of an insect and the wing of a bird
both adaptations to an aerial environment;
between the heart of an insect and the heart of a vertebrate animal
both adaptations for pumping blood;
between the fin of a fish and the paddle of a whale
both adaptive swimming organs, yet the resemblance in these cases does not go deeper than the surface -- it is one of function only.
All such cases of resemblance in function but not in detailed plan of structure are called "analogies,"
and mean nothing more than similarity of environment.
Turning to more fundamental resemblances, such as the wing of a bat and the wing of a bird,
careful study shows detailed internal as well as external similarities of structure. Such cases are "homologies".
On the one hand, then, are found structures which are perfectly analogous and yet in no way homologous:
totally different structures are modified to perform the same functions.
On the other hand are found structures which are perfectly homologous and yet in no way analogous:
the structural elements remain, but are profoundly modified to perform totally different functions.
Homology thus means identity of structure which is the result of identity of parentage. It is the stamp of heredity.
It means blood relationship.
These principles of homology are essential to a correct interpretation of the facts of morphology.
The most striking fact of similar structure among plants and among animals is the existence of a common general plan in any group.
Since backboned animals are best known to most readers, they may be taken as an illustration.
"All vertebrate animals, and none other," says Le Conte, "have an internal jointed skeleton worked by muscles on the outside.
The relation of skeleton and muscle in arthropods is exactly the reverse.
In all vertebrates, and in none other, the axis of this skeleton is a jointed backbone (vertebral column)
enclosing and protecting the nervous centers (cerebrospinal axis).
These, therefore, may well be called backboned animals.
All vertebrates, and none other, have a number of their anterior vertebral joints enlarged and consolidated into a box to form the skull,
in order to enclose and protect a similar enlargement of the nervous center,
viz., the brain; and also usually, but not always, a number of posterior joints,
enlarged and consolidated to form the pelvis, to serve as a firm support to the hind-limbs.
All vertebrates, and none other, have two cavities,
enclosed and protected by the skeleton, viz., the neural cavity above, and the visceral or body cavity below, the vertebral column.
All vertebrates, with few exceptions, and no other animals, have two and only two pair of limbs.
The exceptions are of two kinds, viz.: (a) some lowest fishes, amphioxus and lampreys,
which probably represent the vertebrate condition before limbs were acquired;
and (b) degenerate forms like snakes and some lizards, which have lost their limbs by disuse.
So much concerns the general plan of skeletal structures and is strongly suggestive of -- in fact it is inexplicable without -- common origin.
But much more remains which is not only suggestive, but demonstrative of such origin.
By extensive comparison in the taxonomic and ontogenic series, the whole vertebrate structure in all its details in different animals
may be shown to be modifications one of another.
Sometimes a piece is enlarged, sometimes diminished, or even becomes obsolete; sometimes several pieces are consolidated into one;
but, in spite of all these obscurations, corresponding parts usually may be made out.
These remarkable similarities in the common general plan alone are convincing evidences of descent,
but attention may be called to a like similarity extending to the details of structure.
For example: the wings of a bat (a mammal), a bird and a fossil flying reptile all show the same bones adaptively modified;
a series of either fore or hind limbs of a mammal with one toe (horse),
two toes (sheep), four toes (hog) and five toes (dog)
exhibit a remarkable series of homologies pointing to a five-toed ancestor,
and any other series of organs of vertebrates would give the same evidence of fundamental resemblances (homologies).
For such a series of facts the reader must be referred to special books like Wiedersheim's "Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates,"
Romanes's "Darwin and After Darwin", and Le Conte's "Evolution."
The existence of great similarities in vertebrate structure is not always fully recognized.
To the superficial observer the bodies of animals of different classes seem to differ fundamentally in plan,
to be entirely different machines, made each for its own purposes, at once, out of hand.
Extensive comparison, on the contrary, shows them to be the same, although the essential identity is obscured by adaptive modifications.
The simplest, in fact the only scientific, explanation of the phenomena of vertebrate structure is the idea of a primal vertebrate,
modified more and more through successive generations by the necessities of different modes of life.
See, then, the difference between man's mode of working and Nature's.
A man having made a steam-engine, and desiring to use it for a different purpose from that for which it was first designed and used,
will nearly always be compelled to add new parts not contemplated in the original machine.
Nature rarely makes new parts -- never, if she can avoid it -- but, on the contrary, adapts an old part to the new function.
It is as if Nature were not free to use any and every device to accomplish her end, but were conditioned by her own plans of structure;
as, indeed, she must be according to the derivation theory.
Thus, in the fin of a fish, the fore-paw of a reptile or a mammal, the wing of a bird, and the arm and hand of a man
is found the same part, variously modified for many purposes.
Another striking class of the facts of morphology which admit of scientific explanation only along the line of homology
are the thousands of cases of rudimentary or vestigial structures to be found.
Throughout both the animal and vegetable kingdoms dwarfed and useless representatives of organs are constantly met with,
which in other and allied kinds of animals and plants are of large size and functional utility.
Thus, for instance, the unborn whale has rudimentary teeth,
which are never destined to cut the gums; and throughout its life this animal retains, in a similarly rudimentary condition,
a number of organs which never could have been of use to any kind of creature save a terrestrial quadruped.
Other well-known examples among vertebrates are: Vestiges of hind limbs in certain snakes, reduced wings in the Apteryx and ostriches,
rudiments of eyes in cave fishes, hind limbs beneath the skin of whales, the vermiform appendix in man,
as well as useless muscles to move the ears and the skin, and also a very much reduced hairy covering over the surface of the body.
Wiedersheim has recorded more than one hundred and eighty such structural reminiscences in man.
Now, rudimentary organs of this kind are of such frequent occurrence, that almost every species of organism presents one or more of them
usually, indeed, a considerable number.
How, then, are they to be accounted for?
Of course the theory of descent with adaptive modification has a simple answer to supply
Namely that when from changed conditions of life, an organ which was previously useful becomes useless,
it will be suffered to dwindle away in successive generations, under the influence of certain natural causes.
On the other hand, the theory of special creation can only maintain that these rudiments are formed for the sake of adhering to an ideal type.
"Now, here again the former theory appears to be triumphant over the latter," says Romanes,
"for, without waiting to dispute the wisdom of making dwarfed and useless structures merely for the whimsical motive assigned,
surely if such a method were adopted in so many cases, we should expect that in consistency it would be adopted in all cases.
This reasonable expectation, however, is far from being realized.
In numberless cases, such as that of the fore-limbs of serpents, no vestige of a rudiment is present.
But the vacillating policy in the matter of rudiments does not end here; for it is shown in a still more aggravated form
where within the limits of the same natural group of organisms a rudiment is sometimes present and sometimes absent.
For instance, although in nearly all the numerous species of snakes there are no vestiges of limbs,
in the Python we find very tiny rudiments of the hindlimbs. Now,
is it a worthy conception of Deity that,
while neglecting to maintain his unity of ideal in the case of nearly all the numerous species of snakes, he should have added a tiny rudiment in the case of the Python
and even in that case should have maintained his ideal very inefficiently, inasmuch as only two limbs, instead of four, are represented?
Convincing as are the evidences of descent recorded in the structure of plants and animals,
of descent discovered in the development of plant and animal embryos.
A dozen volumes would be necessary
to present the mass of embryological evidence, but a few salient facts will illustrate the kind of evidence to be deduced from embryology.
Most remarkable of all the principles which have been discovered by embryologists is the "Recapitulation Doctrine"
which, briefly stated, is that individual development (ontogeny) recapitulates ancestral history (phylogeny).
Illustrations quoted from the works of Romanes and Le Conte will make this principle clear.
"It is an observable fact," says Romanes,
that there is often a close correspondence between developmental changes as revealed by any chronological series of fossils which may happen to have been preserved,
and developmental changes which may be observed during the life history of now existing individuals belonging to the same group of animals.
is closely reproduced in the life-history of existing deer. Or, in other words,
the antlers of an existing deer furnish in their development a kind of "resume," or recapitulation, of the successive phases
whereby the primitive horn was gradually superseded by horns presenting a greater and greater number of prongs in successive species of extinct deer.
Now, it must be obvious
that such a recapitulation in the life history of an existing animal of developmental changes successively distinctive of sundry allied,
though now extinct species, speaks strongly in favor of evolution.
For as it is of the essence of this theory that new forms arise from older forms by way of hereditary descent,
we should antecedently expect, if the theory is true,
that the phases of development presented by the individual organism would follow, in their main outlines, those phases of development
through which their long line of ancestors had passed.
The only alternative view is that as species of deer,
for instance, were separately created, additional prongs were successively added to their antlers; and yet that,
in order to be so added to successive species, every individual deer belonging to later species was required to repeat in his own lifetime
the process of successive additions which had previously taken place in a remote series of extinct species.
Now I do not deny that this view is a possible view; but I do deny that it is a probable one.
According to the evolutionary interpretation of such facts, we can see a very good reason why the life-history of the individual
is thus a condensed resume of the life history of its ancestral species.
But according to the opposite view no reason can be assigned why such should be the case.
"It is well known," likewise comments Le Conte,
that the embryo or larva of a frog or toad, when first hatched, is a legless, tail-swimming, water-breathing, gill-breathing animal.
It is essentially a fish, and would be so classed if it remained in this condition.
The fish retains permanently this form, but the frog passes on.
Next, it forms first one pair and then another pair of legs; and meanwhile it begins to breathe also by lungs.
At this stage it breathes equally by lungs and by gills -- i.e., both air and water.
Now, the lower forms of amphibians, such as siredon, menobranchus, siren, etc.,
retain permanently this form, and are therefore called "perennibranchs," but the frog still passes on.
Then the gills gradually dry up, as the lungs develop, and they now breathe wholly by lungs, but still retain the tail.
Now this is the permanent, mature condition of many amphibians,
such as the triton, the salamander, etc., which are therefore called "caducibranchs," but the frog still passes on.
Finally, it loses the tail, or rather its tail is absorbed and its material used in further development, and it becomes a perfect frog,
the highest order (anoura) of this class. Thus, then, in ontogeny the fish goes no further than the fish stages.
The perennibranch passes through the fish stage to the perennibranch amphibian.
The caducibranch takes first the fish form, then the perennibranch form, and finally the caducibranch form, but goes no further.
Last, the anoura takes first the fish-form, then that of the perennibranch, then that of the caducibranch, and finally becomes anoura.
Now, this is undoubtedly the order of succession of forms in geological times -- i.e., in the phylogenic series.
Fishes first appeared in the Devonian and Upper Silurian in very reptilian or rather amphibian forms.
Then in the Carboniferous, fishes still continuing, there appeared the lowest -- i.e., most fish-like forms of amphibians.
These were undoubtedly perennibranchs. In the Permian and Triassic higher forms appeared, which were certainly caducibranch.
Finally, only in the Tertiary, so far as we yet know, do the highest form (anoura) appear.
The general similarity of the three series is complete.
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. By Edgar J. Banks. Chapter 2. The Walls of Babylon.
In the old city of Damascus you climb to the hump of a tall fleet dromedary.
With guides and guards about you, you ride through the covered bazaars crowded with dark-faced Arabs in strange costumes,
and along the narrow winding lane which was once called the "Street Called Straight."
Leaving the city by the eastern gate, and passing a small village or two,
you ascend the hill to the plateau, and before you, as far as the eye can reach, stretches the great Arabian Desert.
With mingling fear and wonder at the mystery always lying beyond the desert horizon,
you tap gently with your heel upon the shoulder of the dromedary to urge her on.
At first, paying little heed to you, she hesitates and glances anxiously about the desert as if in search of an enemy.
Now and then she reaches down to graze the thorny argool along the way.
As the taps upon her shoulder are repeated, she stretches out her long neck, and with long strides makes for the eastern horizon;
she realizes that she is bound on the long journey across the desert. Hour after hour she bears you over the hard monotonous plain.
The Damascus mosques and their minarets sink beneath the western sky.
The desert about you shows no signs of life;
only a tall column of whirling sand, rearing its head until it is lost in the blue above, moves majestically along.
but soon the phantom lake vanishes, while others, still farther beyond, appear and vanish in rapid succession.
Like a great ball of fire the sun sinks in the west.
The stars come out one by one and shine brighter than elsewhere as if to light you on your way.
Late at night the weary dromedary kneels, and on the ground, close beside her, you lie down to sleep.
Again, long before the stars have been scattered by the morning sun, you are on your way.
Day after day you travel on, scorched by the heat of noon-day, shivering in the chill winds of the night.
Two weeks pass, and at last you stand on the eastern edge of the plateau
gazing down upon the great Euphrates winding along the valley beneath.
You have crossed the Arabian Desert, the first stage of the long journey to the walls of Babylon.
Here in the valley the water is sweet and the food abundant.
For ten days you follow down the river, through little villages and black tent encampments, among scenes of strange Arab life which never lose their charm.
Everywhere the valley is dotted with the mounds of buried cities carefully guarding the secrets of the centuries of long ago.
At last you see before you a mound rising like a mountain from the level plain.
Your journey is at an end. Before you is Babylon, the "Gate of God," as the old name means.
About you is all that remains of the second of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Babylon, even in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, was an old, old city.
There is a Hebrew tradition that it was the oldest of all cities, but now we know that great empires flourished and passed away before Babylon was built.
Old King Sargon I., who may have lived as early as three thousand eight hundred B.C.,
seems to have been the first to mention Babylon, and one of his inscriptions seems to say that he built the city and gave it its name.
But in those very early days Babylon was little more than a shrine, surrounded with mud huts and date palms.
It was about 2250 B.C., when the great Hammurabi made it his capital, that it became the chief city of Babylonia.
Its history for the next fifteen hundred years or more is obscure.
We know the names of its kings, and the records speak of long wars with the Assyrians.
In the year six eighty-nine B.C., Sinacherib, King of Nineveh, captured Babylon,
tore down its palaces and temples and walls, and scraped even the foundations of the city into the river.
The place where the old city had stood for three thousand years again became a desert.
Esarhaddon, the son of Sinacherib, was the next King of Nineveh.
He rebuilt Babylon that in accordance with the ancient custom he might be crowned in the sacred city.
When Esarhaddon died, one of his sons, Samas-sum-yukin, was made King of Babylon.
Another son, Assurbanipal, or the great Sardanapalus of the Greeks, became the King of Nineveh.
War broke out between the two brothers, and again Babylon was captured.
In 626 Assurbanipal died,
and in that same year Nabopolassar, the father of the great Nebuchadnezzar, became the King of Babylon.
The building of the Babylon so famous in history began with Nabopolassar.
He enlarged the old city, erected temples, and began the construction of its walls.
In 606, Nineveh, the old enemy of Babylon, fell, never to rise again.
The next year, in 605, Nabopolassar died, and Nebuchadnezzar succeeded him to the throne.
He continued the building operations of his father, until Babylon became the greatest city of its age,
and surrounded it with walls the like of which no other city has ever seen.
but about his name so many legends have grown that it is sometimes difficult to learn the facts of his life.
Early he married Amuhia, a daughter of the Medean king.
His military career began while he was still the crown prince, and his father was on the throne.
In 605,
at the head of the Babylonian army, he defeated the Egyptians in the famous battle of Carchemish, the old Hittite capital,
and drove them from Asia.
Then Syria and Palestine were added to his future empire.
In 597, when he sent his army to Jerusalem, he won the hatred of the Jews by taking Jehoiakin, the King, captive.
Eleven years later, in 586, he destroyed the sacred Hebrew city,
transported the Jews to Babylon, and brought the Hebrew kingdom to an end.
Centuries afterward, even to this day, Jewish mothers teach their children to hate his name.
They tell how he forced the exiles to carry heavy bags of sand across the desert to increase their burdens;
how he cast Hebrew lads into a fiery furnace and into the lions' den,
and how, in punishment for all his wickedness, he became a calf, and for seven years grazed the grass in the fields about the city.
Late in his life, in 567, he invaded Egypt.
During all his reign there was little peace in his great mixed turbulent empire.
The walls of the palaces of many of the Assyrian kings were lined with great stone slabs engraved with reliefs and sometimes with the portrait of a king.
But in Babylonia stone was difficult to obtain, and sculptures were very rare.
Therefore it was useless to hope that Nebuchadnezzar's portrait would be found on his palace walls.