Picture - Cosmic Polymath

94 DESIGN IN NATURE
§ 12. The Effect of Environment Limited.
The question of environment is in all cases an important one, but it must never be forgotten that enviroiiment
while it sHghtly modifies plants and animals, never alters their constitution ; it never makes a plant or an animal
other than what it is by original endowment.
The hfe, and not the environment, makes plants and animals what they are. Environment never produces
a new organ in any organism ;
neither can environment, as apart from hfe, goad plants and animals into activity.
Plants and animals, once created and endowed with hfe, work out their own destinies on the hnes laid down
for them. They defend themselves against environment when that is inimical, but the initiative, in every
instance, comes from themselves. Environment is a dead thing. Plants and animals are hving things, and are
therefore superior to environment. It is a mistake to exalt environment over hfe, as is very frequently done. This
necessitates the assumption and aid of a set of artificial conditions which, I venture to assert, do not exist. It
requires us to take for granted that all the tissues of plants and animals, and plants and animals themselves, are
irritable, and that they can only act in response to outside stimulation. This view robs hfe of its characteristic
power, namely, the power of independent initiative.
§ 13 The Organic and Inorganic Kingdoms Reciprocate.
In order fully to explain some of the more tangible, outstanding, and sahent features which obtain between the
inorganic and organic kingdoms, and which they have in common, it is necessary to refer very briefly to the sun,
solar heat, hght, the atmosphere, soil, moisture, winds, &c., in their relations to growth, development, and organic
movement.
The sun is the great giver of heat and light, and on its presence the life of plants and animals practically
depends.-^ The sun, as far as our planet is concerned, is fixed, but as the earth rotates upon its axis every 24 hours,
and revolves round the sun every 365 days, it follows that the alternations of day and night, and the seasons
spring, summer, autumn, and winter—so indispensable to the health and well-being of plants and animals—are
infallibly secured. The sun is directly connected with the production of winds, as these largely depend on changes
of temperature in certain localities, on the rarefaction and condensation of the air, irregular atmospheric pressure,
vacua or partial vacua, the presence or absence of moisture, &c.
Winds are useful in carrying and diffusing heat and moisture, and in purifying the air which plants and animals
breathe. The organic and inorganic kingdoms are mutually interdependent.
The organic substances are, so to speak, manufactured from the inorganic by plants and animals. A plant to
live must be supplied with soil, with water, and air. The soil contains saline matters, to which are generally added
decomposing substances, which furnish carbonic acid and ammonia. The water furnishes oxygen and hydrogen
in chemical combination ; and the air oxygen and nitrogen, and small but important quantities of carbonic acid
and ammonia. The plant is thus supplied with water, salts, carbonic acid, and ammonia. But the plant can
disintegrate the carbonic acid, and appropriate its carbon, which it can subsequently build up with oxvgen and
hydrogen into sugar, oil, and starch ; or it can combine carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen to form those
peculiar nitrogenous substances recently known as protoplasm. The sun lends its aid to the plant in these trans-
formations ; in fact, the heat of the sun enables the plant to separate the oxygen from the carbon and the nitrogen
from the hydrogen in the formation of sugar, oil, and starch. The heat of the sun is, marvellous to relate, not
lost in the process. It is stored up in the newly-formed sugar, oil, and starch ; and
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may be reconverted into heat
either by burning in the animal body or in an open fire. The heat thus obtained can, when collected, be made to
perform a definite amount of mechanical work. The physical and vital forces are correlated and interact. Sugar,
oil, and starch are manufactured by a vital chemistry, and, when once produced, are appropriated, with other
substances, as food by the Herbivora, and subsequently by the Carnivora and Omnivora. By vital, chemical, physical,
and other forces the inorganic material of the outer world is incorporated in the organic or inner world of plants
and animals.
The animal, built up, as it were, indirectly from the inorganic and directly from the organic kingdoms by means
of the plant, reverses the operations of the latter. It returns to the inorganic world the substances abstracted from
it by the plant. Thus the animal takes the complex bodies produced by the plant, and oxidises or burns them. It
restores the carbon of these bodies to the atmosphere chiefly in the form of carbonic acid, the hydrogen as water
and the nitrogen, with the remainder of the carbon, as urea, to the soil.
While these transformations are going on in the animal body, the tissues are being built up and conserved
' " The life of men, animals, and plants could not continue if the sun had lost its high temperature, and with it its light "
lectures by Helniholtz, 1873.)
(Pouular ' scientifli. ^