Perth Amboy evening news., 1906-03-26
Vegetable
and
Animal
Life Related
By
CAMILLE SAINT
SAENS.
French Composer
and Scientist

- EFT us examine the limbs of the vertebrates. Two are pointing
in one direction, two in another, just as in the vegetable
with the branches and the roots. ALL FOUR PRESENT
~ THE A STRUCTURE. In the animal to one joint
is attached one bone, which ends in a second Joint with
two bones. The advantage of this articulation is extremely pobem-
atical 1t does not appear to RESPOND TO ANY NEED.
At the end of the third joint the subdivisions multiply. There arg
five fingers on the upper and lower pairs. The hand, with the ape and
man, has become an instrument SO marvellous that it is most difficult
for us to believe that it was not specially organized for the functions
which it actually fulhlls. There could be no possible hesitation if the
paw we're degeneration of the hand, or if, at first simple, it gradually
became more complex in order to attain the perfect form. But it was
not thus. The hand exists not only among the superior animals and
the latest corners in the chronology of beings, but it is met in the AN
GENT NIMALS WHERE IT is NEXPLICABLE. We find
it in remote epochs in the powerful arms of the iclthyosauria and the
grand marine turtles. Of what ue could have been these fingers, with
numerous PHALANGES CLOSED IN A SHELL which held
them immovable and moving all in one piece?
All these observations lead us to suppose that we are in the presence
of organs formed not by necessity, but by virtue of a GENERAL
LAW OF RAMIFICATION, only in the vegetables attaining its
complete development, a law which we find as far back as in the crys-
affiliations of the minerals.
Consider next the upper portion of the animal and vegetable axis,
which in both cases bears the name of head. With the plant the head
bears the principal, sometimes the only, efHorescence; with the vere-
brates the brain. Here are most unlike functions, but the difference
will seem less large if we reflect that in both instances this place is C
cupied by the organ that is the MOST IMPORTANT FOR THE
PRESERVATION OF THE SPECIES. Indeed, for the plant, i'm
movable and defenseless, fertilization is the principal factor of this
conservation. With the animal, when the development of the nervous
system has evolved intelligence and conscious will, everything changes.
The future belongs no longer to the most prolific race, But TO THE
MOST INTELLIGENT. OF this the empire exercised by man sa
proof without answer.
Among many animals the tail can be suppressed without it appear
ing to result in any damage to the individual, as if it involved no more
than a simple ornament. But how can we determine to SCI only an or
nament in an organ which, among the %vertebrates, is COMPLETELY
DEVELOPED IN THE EMBRYO, while the limbs are not yet
outlined? That is inadmissible.
Everything is explained, it seems to me, if we admit that the TAIL
OF THE ANIMAL. Is NOTHING ELSE THAN THE TAP
ROOT OF THE VEGETABLE, become useless because the crea-
lure has found and adopted another mode of aimentation than that
whereof the root is the organ.
The preceding considerations lead to these inevitable conclusions:
First-The plant and the animal, starting from the same point,
EVOLVED ACCORDING TO THE SAME LAWS and differ
only in a simple divergence in evolution.
Second-THE PROTOTYPE OF EVOLUTION IS VEGE-
TABLE EVOLUTION. Examined FROM this viewpoint many mys-
tcres ar cleared. We are no longer asonished at the phenomena of
animal appearances observed i'll the vegetables, spores, movements Of
the scnsitves, etc of the vegetable forms affected by certain polyps,
the zoophvtes and certain insects.
HERE is THE THRESHOLD OF ALL THAT is CONNECTED
WITH THE TRANSFORMER THEORY.