Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1904-02-06
MARVELS GROWTH
HOW NATURE SUPPLIES SOME LOST
ORGANS IN ANIMALS.

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 fOun-
dations of life and is almost absent
from its pinnacles and battlements.
There is a popular idea that every part
OF the human body is renewed in the
course of seven years and that the
| grown man who gaZes on his strong
| limbs and (by means of Il mirror) at his
comedy or uncomely face is looking at
totally different person from the
| child who was his infantile represent
alive He was John Smith at ten, he
| is John Smith at twenty-five, and yet
every particle has changed. He is an
! other 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 prOtita-
BILE to discuss. but we know that the
body is capable Of renewal as well as
| of ordinary growth. Cuts and wounds
are filed up by new flesh growing
from the sides until the seams are COM
pletely mended. 1t is possible to take
skin from one persons healthy fore
head and to graft it upon another per-
sons 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
scissors, the claws of cats are reset by
the aid of the drawing room 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 in
stances weigh half a hundredweight,
are 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
fishermen call "Sprouting' and which
men of science term the regeneration
of lost parts. 1t is at its meridian in the
crabs and the spiders, while its dawn
must be looked for far below the mol
luskS 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 a 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.
/ once heard jOcular doctor threat |
en- to amputate patient in the middle !
of his back. Such a radical operation |
would probably have debarred the sub |
ject of it 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 an |
unsuspecting or malicious gardener, /
but simply rests as a private patient /
for month or two and then comes |
out with brand new tail. 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
phOrically. at times, but when those |
ornamental appendages are literally |
off no fresh heads take their place. A
worm, on the contrary, has been known
to grow new brain as well as the |
more humdruh but useful mouth and |
throat in the course of a couple of |
months.
That mixed multitude" of animals |
classed together by naturalists as mol
Iusks, which include the lie abed oys-
ter and the wideawake cuttlefish. con-
tains also the snail, far famed for its
marvellous speed, its habits of evading
the ground landlord by carrying its
house on it's shoulders and for it's abil-
ity TO open new eyes should the orig
4lldiS DS pCiAh"AieHI4S N%Ai >Si'SN' AhC
eyes, as is well known, are carried at
the ends of two horns and can be pull
ed in or thrust out with more than
mechanical ease and precision. II the
eyes are lost by any accident. the life
which pervades the creature, beginning
from the mere stumps. builds up the
optic nerves afresh, furnishes them
with appropriate cases and places ac
curately constructed lenses at the ends.
In the case of a human being who
has lost his eyes the Ophthalmist has
nothing more practical to do than to
send in his bill, and the Optician is re-
duced TO the construction of glass eyes
or some other appliance to hide the de
formity. whereas the snail, treated in
the ophthalmic hospital of nature,