The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-11-10
THE MIRACLE OF GROWTH.
New Limbs for OId-Every Part of
Our Body Nenewed Every Seven
Years-Crabs and Spiders.

Our BODY Renewed Every Seven
Years-Crabs and Spiders.
From the London Mail.
In the many marvels of the animal
world there is nothing more wonderful
than the mystery of growth, and the
lavish way in which nature not only
supplies heads and eyes, legs and tails,
but also supplementary members to
take their place when those useful if
not necessary articles are destroyed or
lost.
The replacement of lost organs is
more common as we approach the
foundations of life, and is almost alb
sent from its pinnacles and battle
ments. There is a popular idea that
every part of the human body is re-
newed in the course of seven years,
and that the grown man who gazes on
his strong limbs, and (by means of a
mirror) at his comely or uncomely
face, is looking at a totally different
person from the child who was his in
fantile representative. He was John
Smith at 10, he is John Smith at rs,
and yet every particle has changed; he
is another John and another Smith
the same, yet not the same.
How much of this theory is true it is
difficult to say, and not very profitable
to discuss. But we know that the body
is capable of renewal as well as of ordi-
nary growth. Cuts and wounds are
filled up by new flesh growing from the
sides until the seams are completely
mended; 1t is possible to take skin from
one persons healthy forehead and graft
it upon another persons nose. and
blood, it is believed, may be drawn
from the veins of the robust and made
to flow in those of the feeble.
More commonplace growths are IA
miliar to every one. The skin is ever
being rubbed or washed away, hair re-
quires cutting at inconveniently short
intervals, human nails demand the scs-
sors, the claws of cats are reset by the
aid of the drawing room furniture, and
those of the tiger by means of friend
ly tree. The horns of male deer, and
in the case of the reindeer those of the
female also-which in some instances
weigh half a NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. brok-
en- off and grow again year by year.
But with these exceptions there is
nothing in the higher animals corre-
spending to the replacing of limbs in
the crab. 1t is only when we leave the
mammals and the birds that we arrive
at the miracle of growth which the
fisherman called "sprouting" and
which men of science term the regen-
Grafton of lost parts. 1t is at it's me-
ridian in the crabs and the spiders,
while its dawn must be looked for far
below the molluses and the worms.
Man, so to speak, only basks In the
rays of the setting sum-
Lost Members Replaced.
Sea anemones, which With their
green, pink, cream, blue and crimson
floral beauty turn the shores of the
ocean into a marine paradise, may be
cut down by adverse circumstances, as
our garden flowers are by a Northern
blast without losing their vitality or
their power of recuperation. Let but
layer of the original root remain at
tached to the rock, and they will again
grow bodies. and crown them with
bud-like fringes, which serve them for
lips and hands.
once heard a ocular doctor threat
en- to amputate patient in the middle
of his back. Such radical operation
would probably have debarred the
subject of it from violent athletic pur-
suits for the rest of his life. An earth
worm thinks nothing of being taken
off in the middle of the back by the
spade of an unsuspecting or malicious
gardener, but simply rests as a private
patient for a month or two, and then
comes out with brand new tall. Even
the loss of the other end does not
trouble the interesting creature which
Darwin raised from the status of a
pest to the honorable rank Of one of
the worlds benefactors.
Most people lose their heads. meta