Part 10

Thus we see that a pearl is not only a disease or abnormal growth caused by a parasite, but is actually an elaborately formed tomb or sarcophagus, in which the parasite is enclosed layer upon layer. This mode of disposing of parasites and other intrusive bodies is not unusual in animals. The terrible little flesh-worm--the Trichina--which causes the death of rats, pigs, and men who eat raw meat, is sometimes conquered in this way. It is found in the muscles (flesh) of man and animals enclosed in little pearl-like sacs, half the size of a hempseed, and it dies there, unless the invaded animal should die, and its flesh be eaten (as raw ham for instance) by another animal. The burying of inconvenient corpses in plaster of paris, corresponding to pearls as we now know them, has been a method of concealment occasionally adopted by criminals. On the whole, pearls have not very pleasant associations.

The history of the special parasitic worm which invades the beautiful little pearl-oyster of Ceylon has recently been followed out by skilful naturalists. There, too, a smaller oyster-eating fish of a peculiar kind, and a larger fish which eats the first fish, are necessary for the reproduction and multiplication of the pearl-producing parasites. The new Ceylon Pearl-Fishing Company has, therefore, to see to it that both these kinds of fish are encouraged to live in the sea near where the pearl oysters are found, and it is their object to increase the parasitic disease by which pearls are formed, and ensure an abundance of parasites.

An interesting new method has been recently applied to the examination of pearl oysters for pearls. The Rontgen rays are used to produce a skiagraph (such as surgeons use in searching for a bullet) of the pearl oysters when brought into harbour. They are thus rapidly examined one by one, without injury, and the shadow-picture shows the pearl or pearls inside those oysters which are infected. The pearlless oysters are returned to the depths of the sea, whence they came--those with small pearls only are kept in special reserves or sea-lakes, in order that the pearl may grow in size, whilst only those with good-sized pearls are opened at once, in order that the pearl may be extracted and sent to market.

There were great findings of pearls in the fresh-water pearl mussels of the Scotch rivers in former days. In the last forty years of the eighteenth century these pearls were exported from Scotland to France to the value of £100,000.

In the eighteenth century not only did they get their pearls from European rivers instead of from the East; but, instead of being excited about the artificial production of diamonds, they were driven wild with astonishment by the demonstration of the volatilisation of these stones--the disappearance of diamonds into invisible vapour when sufficiently heated. That the hardest stone in nature could be thus dissipated into thin air seemed incredible. On Aug. 10, 1771, a chemist named Rouelle invited to his laboratory to witness this wonder a company comprising the Margrave of Baden and the Princess his wife, the Dukes of Chaulne and of Nivernois, the Marchionesses of Nesle and of Pons, the Countess of Polignac, and some members of the Academy of Sciences, including the great chemist Lavoisier. Four diamonds--the largest belonging to the Count Lauraguais--were submitted before the eyes of all to the heat of a furnace, and in three hours had completely evaporated. There was, no doubt, room here for a mystification and for the abstraction of the diamonds with a view to dishonest appropriation. But no such purpose existed. The experiment was a genuine one, and Rouelle and his brother were honest investigators. They established the fact, now demonstrated as a lecture experiment, that the diamond is volatilised at very high temperatures. A more celebrated “evaporation” of diamonds--that which is known as “the affair of the Queen’s necklace”--took place a few years later in Paris, when no scientific investigation was connected with the embarrassing disappearance of the Royal trinket.

35. A King Who was a Zoologist

The King of Portugal, Carlos di Braganza, who was assassinated in the spring of 1908, was one of the most gifted and vigorous men of his age, fearless and intelligent to a rare degree, good-hearted, and devoted to the welfare of his people. If any man were justified in having no fear of outrage because he was conscious that his uprightness was proved and known to all men, his benevolence experienced by all, his ability and vast knowledge recognised by all, Dom Carlos was that man. Fanaticism, however, takes no account of the virtues of its victims. Until society has invented a method for keeping instruments of destruction out of the reach of dangerous, more or less maniacal individuals, all those who excite the fanatic’s brain, even by the excellence and nobility of their lives, risk death whenever they trust themselves to the tender mercies of a crowd. Psychology may one day enable us to detect, and improved supervision of children enable us to segregate before it is too late, the latent assassins in our midst. If they have not a king as their quarry their reason is palsied by a president, and were there no presidents, they would become homicidal in the presence of a prefect or a policeman--even of a professor.

Some four years ago I had the honour of conducting Dom Carlos round the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road. He arrived without attendant or escort, and I passed two hours alone with him. I had been told that he was a great shot and fond of natural history, that he played every athletic game, rode, and swam better than the best, that he was a fine water-colour painter, a real artist--and a first-rate musician and singer. I was astonished at his knowledge and personal experience in natural history. His burly form and bright, honest face gave me a most agreeable impression, and when he said (as I had been told he would) to each explanation of a specimen upon which I ventured for his edification, “I know! I know!” felt that it was true, and that he really did know. “I have shot thirty of them in the south of my country,” he said of some rare bird. “I know! I know! I have described a new species like that in my book on the birds of Portugal. I shall send it to you!” was his comment on another. When we came to some wonderful coral-like specimens--sea-pens and sea-feathers, dredged in the deep sea and preserved in spirits, for exhibition in the Museum--he said, to my astonishment, “Those are very bad. I get much better than those in my yacht off the Portuguese coast. I preserve them myself; it is a real art. I shall send you some.” I said they would be a very welcome addition. “Yes, I know! I know!” he said. “Would you like some fishes, too? The Prince of Monaco has some fine things, and he led me to collect also myself. I have now many things better than his. I shall send you some fishes, too.” And he did. A few months after his return to Portugal he sent to the Museum a large collection, preserved in spirit, which included many very fine and interesting specimens of deep-water Atlantic fishes; also his work, with coloured plates, on the Birds of Portugal, and a most remarkable publication on the tunny fisheries of the South Coast of Portugal--giving a careful survey of the waters, sea bottom, currents, fauna, and flora in correct, expert form, such as might issue from a Government Fisheries Board, but in this case done, as modestly indicated on the title-page, by the Head of the State himself, “Dom Carlos di Braganza.” He went into the work-rooms of the Museum, where some new fishes were being drawn, and conversed with the naturalist in charge, and criticised the drawings. He saw everything, appreciated everything, and then looking at his watch, said, “I have only five minutes to get to a lunch party. Thank you very much for the most delightful time. I should like to stay all the day; it is a splendid place,” and was off in his brougham.

I exhibited the specimens and books sent by his Majesty for some weeks in the Central Hall of the museum, before they were incorporated in the great collection, for I felt that it was a rare and interesting thing that a king should not merely take a sportsman’s pleasure in birds, beasts, and fishes, but actually be, so to speak, “one of us”--a zoologist who discovers, describes, and names new things. The Prince of Monaco is the only other head of a State who is a serious scientific naturalist. He has built and endowed a magnificent museum and laboratory at Monaco, where his skilled assistants carry on researches and look after the extremely valuable and important collections which he has himself made in a series of cruises in the Atlantic extending over many years. He has not only employed capable naturalists to help him, but is himself the chief authority and an original discoverer in “oceanography,” the science of the great oceans.

A year or so ago, when Dom Carlos visited Paris, a special fête and reception was organised in his honour at the “Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle,” in the Jardin des Plantes. The “Museum” of the Jardin des Plantes is a very remarkable institution, including a zoological and botanical garden, laboratories of chemistry, physics, and physiology, besides the great collections of minerals, fossils, skeletons, and preserved specimens of animals and plants. It is governed by the professors and the director who are in charge of the garden, the laboratories, and the collections, and owes its dignity and its celebrity to the distinguished men of science who for a century and a half have made discoveries and taught there. They are not subject to a board of eminent and wealthy persons, nor is the administration of the antiquities at the Louvre and of the National Library muddled up with that of the great scientific workshop of Natural History.

When the President of the Republic conceived the plan of entertaining the King of Portugal at the Museum of Natural History there were those who supposed that the Minister of Education would, as a great State official, be called upon to arrange the proceedings. Nothing of the sort was done. It was found that the Minister had no authority in regard to the Museum, which, as an independent State institution, organised and carried out the reception through its own officers. The director and professors received President Fallières and the King, escorted by the troops of the Republic. The garden and buildings were ablaze with light and colour, and a large company assembled to take part in the fête. In the great hall of the museum Becquerel, Moissan, and others showed their most recent discoveries as to radium, artificial diamonds, and such matters to the King; others exhibited new birds and fishes, the okapi and newly-discovered fossils, and briefly explained their history and significance. The King conferred decorations on the scientific staff, and gave friendly acknowledgments to all who had thus sought to gratify his special tastes, and prepared for him a really exceptional gala-demonstration of scientific discovery. The official “middle-men,” who in other countries contrive to divert the honour and emoluments due to men of science, to their own profit, were on this occasion happily kept at a distance.

36. The Transmission to Offspring of Acquired Qualities

The cruel fate of Dom Carlos of Portugal naturally enough produced philosophic and thoughtful articles in some of the journals of the day. An able writer told his readers that the “kingly caste” has characteristics peculiar to itself, “which illustrate the Darwinian law.” He does not say what Darwinian law, and I am afraid he would find it difficult to do so. He says that people who for centuries have had their own way (how many kingly families have done so?), who have always lived on good food and never tasted bad wine, and have constantly conversed with interesting people (not usually the chance of princes!) must certainly, if subject to “the laws which govern animal and plant life,” produce well-marked characteristics in their offspring--and he goes on to speak of a fine appetite for food (what he describes is really a morbid condition connected with indigestion) as indigenous to Royalty, and declares that the gift of recognising faces and remembering names is “a faculty cultivated by generations of practice.”

One must recognise with satisfaction the desire to explain the facts and varieties of human life and character by reference to “the laws which govern animal and plant life.” It is by faithfully and truly carrying out the inquiries suggested by that desire that the knowledge which is the sole and absolutely essential condition for the safe conduct of human life and the increased happiness of human communities, can be obtained, and by such inquiries only; and, further, only upon the condition that the investigation is conducted in the true scientific spirit with accuracy and without prejudice. The remarks upon the kingly caste which I have quoted above show with what “legerity and temerity” a clever and respected writer will formulate phrases and conclusions which are, in face of what Darwin and his successors have demonstrated, absurdly erroneous, in fact, topsy-turvy as compared with the reality.

The main doctrine which Darwin and his followers have established is that neither castes nor families of higher or lower living things, including man, acquire any new characteristics by exposure to special circumstances or by consuming finer or coarser food, which can or do become innate or fixed in the race. The individual may be improved or depraved, enlarged or enfeebled, by the conditions of his individual life, but he cannot transmit the qualities--the improvement, the depravity, the enlargement, or the dwindling--which have been thus attained by him to his offspring. The race cannot be changed in this way. All the parents can transmit is the quality which they themselves have inherited of resisting or of collapsing, of becoming enfeebled, or of showing strength and vigour, under certain given conditions. The characteristics of Royalty are not characteristics brought about by the Royal state, any more than the characteristics of English race-horses are brought about by the racing state or by life in a breeder’s stable. The characteristics of Royalty are like those of other living things, the characteristics of a certain family or blend of families or strains. Whatever characteristics distinct Royal families have in common with one another are not due to the existence of a natural law in virtue of which the occupations and opportunities of the Royal state produce “faculties” or “characteristics” in the “blood” or “stock.” Such similarity of characteristics is due either to the similarity of the demands and conditions of Court life in all parts of Europe, acting as an educating force on the individual, or to the intermarrying and consequent blending of family characteristics among a large proportion of the Royal Houses at present existing.

It is very difficult--indeed impossible until much more is written and read on the subjects of breeding and of psychology--to persuade people to abandon the notion that a man who has drunk good wine and conversed with interesting people will, as a direct result, transmit something which he has “taken up” or absorbed from the good wine and the clever people to his offspring, and that a faculty for this or that art or accomplishment cultivated by generation after generation is increased thereby, and transferred as it were into the very vitals of the race--the reproductive germs which each individual has within him. There is no truth whatever in these fancies. They are popular and very natural delusions, which are not only devoid of direct proof by simple observation and experiment, such as that made by all breeders of stock and by medical men, but are also contrary to the great general principles which have been found to explain the varied and most important facts known as to breeding, inheritance, and variation. The same erroneous theory of inheritance now applied to royalty has been put forward in regard to the feeble-minded, the ill-grown, and the incapable at the other end of the social scale.

The only way in which a quality, good or bad, desirable or undesirable, is intensified, made inherent and dominant in a race or strain or family, is by selective breeding--selection due to natural rejection of those individuals not possessing the quality, or to artificial rejection of such individuals by the stock owner and breeder. No human maker of breeds--whether of cattle, horses, birds, or plants--ever yet proceeded by exercising, feeding, educating, or otherwise manipulating his sires and dams; he simply selects those as parents which by natural variation have the quality, more or less, which he desires, and he destroys or sterilises those which fail to satisfy his requirements. He is perfectly confident that in this way he can ensure the reproduction and exaggeration or dominance of the characteristics which he desires; he knows that he cannot obtain a “strain” or “breed” by any treatment, any feeding, or education of those which are born without the natural, innate possession of the desired quality, in a more or less marked degree. Once the characteristic turns up as a congenital variation, it can be intensified by coupling its possessor with a mate of like quality; but both sire and dam have to be rigidly selected with this purpose in view. Such methods are not adopted in human families, even royal ones.

In considering these questions as to characteristic qualities or want of qualities in groups and classes of human communities, we see then that we have in the first instance to distinguish very broadly between the body or structure of the individual, and the “stirps” or germ of the race which he carries within him. The former may be vastly changed for the better or worse as compared with average individuals, without affecting in any way the latter. The germ is carried by the individual member of the race in an almost complete state of isolation or safety from the influences which affect the individual’s structure generally (his body as distinct from his germinal or reproductive substance) injuriously or beneficially. The germ varies also, but independently. That is a matter of primary importance. Equally important in the case of man is a peculiarity which affects his manifestation of qualities in a way unknown in any other living thing.

Human society, in more marked and dominating form, in proportion as it is what we call “civilised,” has created for itself an inheritance which is not dependent on the variations of strains and the laws of actual breeding. Over and above--very much above--what each man inherits in the form of qualities and characteristics of his special family and stock--is the enormous mass of accumulated experience, knowledge, tradition, custom, and law--which pervades and envelops, as it were, the mere physical generations of this or that pullulating crowd of human individuals. Tradition, at first conveyed by gesture and imitativeness from parents to offspring, then by word of mouth, then by writing, and finally by printed record, sanctioned and enforced by all kinds of persuasion and compulsion--has culminated in an educative discipline which affects every individual in the community in the most powerful way--and constitutes an inheritance of a significance and activity altogether transcending, and independent of that due to the physical transmission of bodily and mental qualities. Public opinion, law, knowledge, belief, custom, and habit exist, and pursue their own course of change, as it were, outside the successive bodily generations of a population. Yet they determine in very large measure the characteristics which each class, and the community as a whole, exhibit. We have to distinguish those results which are due to physical heredity, similar in man and in animals--from results due to this all-powerful education peculiar to man--education, which for civilised man proceeds from almost innumerable sources--from parents, nurses, playfellows, companions, social, professional, and political organisations, as well as from the professed teacher, and from the local peculiarities of the simplest conditions of life. Hence it is that man inherits very little in the way of ready-made instincts, tricks of his nervous mechanism--but, on the contrary, has an enormously long period of individual growth and education, and inherits “educability” to a degree which varies in every family and race.

To estimate correctly, and so to deal with these various factors in human life, we require to know in detail the laws of breeding, heredity, variation, and selection in animals, and, further, the laws or formulated results of enquiry as to the “educability” of the human being, the range and the limits of “education,” the relation of hereditary quality to education, the causes of mental aberration and defect, of mental qualities of all kinds, the value and the dangers of all kinds of educational influences, whether physical, social, or intellectual. These are matters in regard to which there must be in the future more and more of common knowledge and agreement; at present they are lightly touched by politicians and journalists in a way which is inconsistent with a knowledge of the facts or of their importance.

When publicists airily declare that the virtues of kings and the vices of paupers are both due to the hereditary transmission of characters acquired by the peculiarities of diet and exercise of the progenitors of these classes it is time to protest. To cite the name of Darwin and “the laws which govern animal and plant life,” in support instead of in condemnation of such baseless fancies, is, one must suppose, an evidence, not of a desire to mislead, but of a regrettable indifference to the conclusions of that branch of human knowledge which is of more importance than any other to the statesman and the philanthropist.

“Selection,” whether due to survival in the struggle for existence or exercised by man as a “breeder” or “fancier,” is the only way in which new characteristics, good or bad, can be implanted in a race or stock, and become part of the hereditary quality of that race or stock. This applies equally to man and to animals and plants. And this selection is no temporary or casual thing. It means “the selection for breeding” of those individuals which spontaneously by the innate variability which all living things show (so that no two individuals are exactly alike) have exhibited from birth onwards, more or less clearly, indications of the characteristic which is to be selected. Nothing done to them after birth, and not done to others of their family or race, causes the desired characteristic; it appears unexpectedly, almost unaccountably as an in-born quality. It may be a slight difference only, not easy to take note of; but if it enables those who possess it to get the better of their competitors in the struggle for life, they will survive and mate and so transmit their characteristic to the next generation, whilst those who do not possess it and are beaten in life and fail to obtain food, safety, and mates, will perish and disappear, and their defective strain will perish with them.

37. Variation and Selection Among Living Things

Selection is not a thing once done and then dropped--natural selection is continuous and never-ending, except in rare and special circumstances, such as man may bring about by his interference, and then it does not really cease but only changes its demand. The characteristics of a race or species are maintained by natural selection, just as much as they are produced by it. Cessation of a previously active selection (which is sometimes brought about by exceptional conditions) results in a departure of the individuals of the race, no longer subject to that selection, from the standard of form and characteristics previously maintained. To understand this, we must consider for a moment the great property of living things, which is called “variation.”

No two animals, or plants even, when born of the same parents, are ever exactly alike. Not only that, but if we look at a great number of individuals of a race or stock, we find that some are very different from the others, in colour, in proportion of parts, in character, and other qualities. As a rule it is difficult to look at such a number, because in Nature only two on the average out of many hundreds, sometimes thousands, born from a single pair of parents, grow up to take their parents’ place, and these two are those “selected” by natural survival on account of their close resemblance to the parents. But if we experimentally rear all the offspring of a plant or animal to full growth--not allowing them to perish by competition for food, or place, or by inability to escape enemies--then we see more clearly how great is the in-born variation, how many and wide are the departures from the favoured standard form which are naturally born and owe their peculiarities to this birth-quality--called innate or congenital variation--and not to anything which happens to them afterwards differing from what happens to their brothers and sisters.

Of course, we are all familiar with this “congenital or innate variation,” as shown by brothers and sisters in human families. How and why do innate variations arise? They arise from chemical and mechanical action upon the “germs” or reproductive cells contained in the body of the parents, and also sometimes from the mating in reproduction of two strains or races which are already different from one another. When an animal or plant is given unaccustomed food or brought up in new surroundings (as, for instance, in captivity) its germs are affected, and they produce variations in the next generation more abundantly. The best analogy for what occurs is that of a “shaking up” or disturbance of the particles of the germ or reproductive material, somewhat as the beads and bits of glass in a kaleidoscope are shaken and change from one well-balanced arrangement to another. And the same analogy applies to the crossing or fertilising of “strain” or “race” by another differing from it. A disturbance is the consequence, and a departure in the form and character of the young from anything arrived at before often takes place. These variations have no necessary fitness or correspondence to the changed conditions which have produced them. They are, so to speak, departures in all and every direction--not very great, but still great enough to be selected by survival if occurring in wild extra-human nature, and obvious enough when produced in cultivated animals and plants to be seen and selected by man, the stock-breeder or fancier.

Indeed the stock-breeder and horticulturist go to work in this way deliberately. Though when they have fattened an animal or fed up a plant they cannot make it transmit its fatness or increased size to its offspring, yet they can, by special feeding and change of conditions of life--or by cross-breeding--break up the fixed tendency or quality of the germs within the parents so treated. Thus they get offspring produced which show strange and unexpected variations of many kinds--new feathers, new colours, new shapes of leaf, increased size of root, length of limb--all kinds of variations. From the congenital varieties thus produced by “stirring up,” “breaking down,” or disturbing the germ-matter (germ-plasm) of the parents, the breeder next proceeds to select and mate those which show the character which suits his fancy, whilst he destroys or rejects the others. Thus he establishes, and by repeated selection in every generation maintains, and if he desires increases, the characteristics which he values.

Birth-variation is then an inherent property of living things (including man) as much as heredity, which is the name for the property expressed in the resemblance of offspring to parent. And birth-variation, or congenital variation--that is to say, the being born with a power to grow into something different (not greatly, but still obviously, different) from their parents or ancestry, and from their brethren and cousins, though not subjected after birth to any treatment or conditions differing from those common to all of them--is a quality of living things which must be distinguished altogether from the power of the individual itself, though not born with qualities differing from those of its brothers and sisters, to vary or change in some respects as compared with other individuals when it is specially fed or exposed to special treatment. The first is change, or variation, of the “stirps,” or germ plasm; the second is change, or variation, of the transient body of the individual. The first is indefinite and may be of almost any kind or form; once it has appeared, it is a permanent possession of the race descended from its owner. The second is definite and a direct reaction to the environment. Such an individually induced or stimulated change is often called an “acquired character.” It does not affect the stirps, the inner reproductive germs, and cannot be handed on by inheritance to a new generation.