The Washington times., 1919-02-02
Some Big Things To Think
About This Afternoon

ABOUT / Ills AILCTlOOu
This earth and all other planets in space ruled by
the THINKING creatures that dwell upon it. All living
beings huge elephants ruling man. the tiny insect all
work with brains less complicated none Of them
thoroughly understood by who try to understand them
all
Every creature from the whale, seventy feet long,
weighing many TONS the microbe invisible to our eyes
is made up In exactly the way, OF individual cells as
Robert Hook the disCoverer, called them.
All the animals in existence start single cell You
yourself Ia the beginning single CELL invisible to
the naked eye With growth the cells increase In NUMBER
tiny animals made up OF several thousand ces larger
animals Of thousands Of millions Of such cells Fhese Cells
tiny paricles of what scientists call protopasm, make
up ali living creatures insects men, or elephants, as
separate bricks fastened together make up building
Somewhere in each complete collection of cells there
Is at work brain, complicated as in man, in the elephant
and ant less complicated nervous senstveness In
the very lowest forms OF life.
Millions Of different creatures live on the earth in the
water and in the air of this planet They all struggle to
get what they want to escape destroy their enemies
Each for attack and defense the less feeble
spark of intelligence planted In It.
And every creature big little the huge elephant or
tiny sphs that destroys the leaves In your garden
It could breed and multiply undsturbed would overrun
the whole earth.
s As you look at this picture of man studying the
ysterousy intelligent ant you may be interested in
Of these facts concerning natures marvellous fertility and
power Of reproduction
It was pointed out in this newspaper the other day
that the elephant sloWest breeding animal produces its
young between the ages of thirty and hundred and in
the seventy years pair of elephants produce only six
young elephants Yet in hundred and fifty years
only day in the history Of the wordOne single pair of
elephants would produce nineteen million elephants
And that reproductive power is mere nothing.
Consider the American oyster Nine times prolific
the English oyster it lays in year nine million eggs
about fifty millions in the life Of an oyster, which lasts five
six years.
One single pair of American oysters all their young
could live and reproduce would f with solid mass
Of oysters all the oceans rivers and lakes the earth
would the to overflow its bounds that the
entire earth would be covered with salt water about
mile deep And it would take only few years to accom-
phsh that result-f it conceivable-for when you
multiply fifty millions by fifty millions you increase popu
lation rapidly.
And yet compared with other living things the oyster
breeds slowly the elephant does compared with the
oyster.
It seems marvellous to say that one single pair of
American oysters produce nine million young in one
summer but to natures reproductive power that is nothing
at all Consider the aphides so-caed 'plant ice' OF
green flies Linnaeus the great naturalist studying these
marvellous creatures, found that 'in one year single
aphis would produce QUINTILLIoN of descendants"
It is utterly impossible for the mind of realize
what QUNTuLIoN means, especially with the English
way of calculating millions and billions billion is al
million millions trlion is million billions. In order
to write out quntion the number Of young that
could in year from single aphs write the figure
and after it thirty ZERoS
Fortunately nature is powerful as well as cruel And
the little plans Of men, mice and microbes do not inter
fere with her intentions.
Her allies war, hatred hunger, and disease And
she will manage to keep down within reasonable limits all
populations whether of men, elephants oysters aphdes
Man viii settle his problem Of population somewhat
after the fashion of the big elephant The elephant was
so powerful that the other animals couldn't kill him As
he lived hundred years. it is fortunate that he only
had six children during seventy years Of breeding It would
have been serious he had had nine million year like
the Amsgican oyster
The elephant most intelligent of animals except per
haps the chmpanzee and most powerful regulated his
problem Of population largely by his low birth until
man along threatening to make the elephant
EXTINCT like the bison and other big animals.