Perth Amboy evening news., 1904-06-10
IRACULOUSGROWTH
NATURE SUPPLIES LOWER AMI
MAILS WITH LOST ORGANS.
Renewal of Human Systems Every
Seven Years-Many Singular
Changes Are Always
a.
Going On.

In the many marVelS Oh the dnluldl
world there is nothing more wonderful
than the mystery of growth n 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 II not
necessary articles are destroyed or lost,
writes a naturalist in the London Mail.
The replacement Of lost organs Is
more common a. we approach the
foundations of life, and is almost absent
from it's pinnacles and battlements.
There is a popular idea that every part
of the human body is renewed in the
course of seven years, and thatthe grown
man who gazes on his strong limbs, and
(by means of a mirrorC at his comely or
uncomely face, is looking at a totally
different person from the child who was
his ~infantile representative. He was
John Smith at ten, he is John Smith at
25, 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 ordinary
growth. Cuts and wounds are filled up
by new flesh, growing from the sides I'M
til the seams are completely mended; 1t
is possible to take skin from one per-
sons healthy forehead and to graft Il;
upon another persons nose. and blood,
a. 10 hoI;ouo1 ~nou ha dro WIN 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 scis-
sors, the claws of cats are reset by the
aid of the drawing-rcom furniture, and
those of the tiger by means of a friendly
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 OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES broken OFF
and grow again year by year.
But with these exceptions there is
nothing in the higher animals CORE
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 fish
erman called "sprouting," and which
men of science term the regeneration OIL
the lost parts. 1t is at it's meridian in the
crabs and spiders, while its dawn must
be looked for far below the mollusks
and the worms. Man, so to speak, only
basks in the rays of the setting sun.
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 q northern
blast, without losing their vitality or
their power of recuperation. Let but a
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.
l once heard a ~jocular doctor threat
en- to amputate a patient in the middle
of his back. Such a radical operation
would probably have debarred the sub
ject of 1t from violent athletic pursuits
for the rest of his life. An earthworm
thinks nothing of being taken off in the
middle of the back by the spade of ar
u%nsuspecting or malicious gardener, but
simply rests as a private patient for a
month or two, and then zones out with
a brand-new tail. Even the loss of the
other end does not trouble the interest
ing 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
phorically, at times, but when those or
namental appendages are literally off, no
fresh heads take their place. A worm,
on the contrary, has been known to grow
a new brain, as well as the more hum
drum but useful mouth and throat, in
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