IN NATURE'S BACKYARD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2254, 13 May 1897, Page 48

IN NATURE'S BACKYARD.

By Dinornis.

My attention has been called to an article, copied from a Home paper, reprinted in the Witness a few weßks since. This article, entitled "Marvellous Inventions You Carry About with You," puts forward a somewhat one-sided view of Nature's ability as an inventor. It tells of the many wonderful adaptations that long-continued scrutiny has Bhown to 'exist within our corporal frames, but entirely omits to mention any one of a host of defects that the same Dams Nature has bequeathed to us, her childran. Although the term "invention" does in no sense apply to products of life, growth, and evolution, we will, in this instance, let the notion stand as being good enough for the purpose of the hour. It is well, however, to remember that in spsaking of " Nature and her works " the phrase used is a simile and nothing more. "We Should not place the works of Nature on one side and Nature on the other. Nature is a work and not a person." It is recorded of Goethe that upon seeing a wonderful living process for the first time he exclaimed: " Ah, there is the old lady at work ! " Assuming for the nonce a faultfinding mood, we wili devote an hour to inspecting some results of the old lady's work. We will, so to apeak, take a stroll through Nature's backyard, and indulge ourselves with a peep at some of the abortive, useless, or unnnighed inventions there to be seen.

To begin with our own sslves, we are all conceited enough to easily believe that we are really the lords of creation, and considering how rapidly the " inferior animals " go down before our human progress, we are probably light in our assumption. It is true that during this era of the new woman, the old man, not to mention the young one, is likely to find his claim rudely shakan by his sister. Burns, over a hundred years since, sang of Nature that " She tried her prentice hand on man, and then she made the lasaes, oh," and science in our own day has* practically demonstrated that the female ia the suoerior

organism, though the man may have the more active brain. Superior as we in our conceit think ourselves, however, we carry about with us sufficient reminders of our lowly origin to keep us humble before the everlasting mystery of the infiaita. From the crown of our heads to the soles of our feet we are liberally endowed with these reminders. The hairs on our skin are but the rudiments of a complete pelt which the primeval ancestor combed with bis nails. Naked savages are ls»3 hairy than the test of as who go clothed. A smooth skin seems to have been most highly thought of among unclad races, with the result that in course of time^ those having the shaggiest skins were selected out of existence. We are tcld, however, that when habitually naked races take to clothing the hair shows a decided tendency to again grow to a certain extent. Every child, at a, certain period of its embryonic life, possesses a complete covering of fine hair, the lanugo, which is lost before birth. In regard to this "invention" Dame Nature appears to have changed her mind. Every adult human being has a rudimentary tail, called the coccyx, perfectly useless as such, and composed of a few anchylosed vertebue. Bat at an earlier period of existence the tail is unmistakably more complete, consisting of several additional vertebras. In the course of development these additional joints of an external tail are rapidly produced, and as rapidly lost again — absorbed, so that not a trace remains ; it is not 20 years since their existence was demonstrated. Lord Monboddo, that whimsical but long-headed Soot, maintained that hnman beings originally had tails, and that they had worn them down to stumps by sitting upon them over much. The same notion would have to be applied to the tails of anthropoid apes, whose tails ara quite as " stumpy " as our own. Very early, too, in pre-natal life the arterial system of our bodies ie quite different from what it becomes later on. Ia the earlier state the arrangement is like that which is permanent in fishes, as though Nature had at first intended to make us red cod or mackerel. In the later dssign very much greater complexity is introduced, and in the majority of instances all such parts of the original fabric as are useless are completely eliminated. Sometimes, however, this does not take place, and a few of us carry throughout life useless rudiments of thesa obsolete organs.

Our ears contain distinct traces of muscles which are identical with those which in other mammals are used to regulate the shape of that organ. These tiny patchea of muscle are perhaps the most perfectly useless parts of oar fr?.mes,;the greater part of the external ear being quite useless also. There are other muscles attached to the scalp which in some far distant ancestor served to move the ear as a whole forward?, backward*, or upwards. Now and then an individual ia to be mst with who can " cock his ears," but in the greater number of instances this little arrangement of mechanism is entirely unworkable, and in all it is perfectly useless. None of us would like to have our ears cropped, but we have to endure frostbite, chilblains, &c , from Nature's negligence in failing to" remove structures that are quite useless. The internal ear is a tortuously complicated apparatus, very liable to serious derangement and very difficult to gat at when deranged. In regard to its proper function, Dame Nature when ahe fabricated it thought fit to leave ifc incapable of hearing either very high or very low tones, and even more incapable of judging of either the direction or distance of sounds.

N either the human nor any other eye is as perfect &b numerous quibble-mongeis 'have attempted to make out. As a matter of

fact there ' are no perfect organa at all, although maay perform their functions "better than others. We see, i£ we look thisgQ over in a candid way, adaptation to function throughout the whole of -life's realm?, but the adaptation is never perfect The fact that so many people require glasses — extra eyes — to aid ordinary vision shows that thio [ organ is, to say the least, very easily disordered in a great variety of v&ys. " Optii cally the eye is not perfectly planned to guard j against spherical or chromatic aberration, ' while in mechanical construction ib i& in-

ferior to the cheapest optical instrument in the market. Astigmatism, or want of sphericity of the cornea, is present in a greater or lees degree in the case of every human eye, while tbe crystalline lens seems to be even more imperfect than the cornea in this respect. Moreover, these refracting media, the cornea and crystalline lens, are not truly centred, as Helmholtz has shown, on the optical axis of the eye. The refracting media of the eye, as the aqueous humour, the crystalline lens, and vitreous humour, are not uniformly transparent, and hence rays of light during transmission undergo absorption and refraction, givirjg rise to various shadowß, halos, and fringes, which fall upon the retina, to the great impairment of vision. Even in the best of eyes there are numerous opaque granules, or floating patches, in the humours, giving rise to floating spots or spectres, so well observed and yet so annoying while using th.B microscope, especially if the field is well illuminated. Long-sightedness and short-sighted-ness are common difficulties arising from want of proper relation between the refracting power of the eye and its depth, or the antero-posterior diameter." Difficulties of this" kind are avoided in the most ordinary cameras in uss.

Among other inventions of which Nature has little reason to be proud are our teeth. They cause an immense deal of suffering daring their growth, especially in infancy, as they saw their way through tender and swollen game for two or three miserable years. And when the child has cut its teeth it has begun to lose them again. They decay away and are forced ouif by another set, dignified by the name of " permanent " teeth. These so-called pt-rmacent teeth almoßt always require the aid of the dentist long before full bodily growth is attained, and as a matter of fact the dentist furnishes us with the only strictly reliable and permanent teeth we ever have. Nature's products ia this department of invention are a long way behind the artificial article as a rule. There are to be found a few favoured individuals now and then who may be called exceptions. Viewed as mechanism, our throats are extraordinary examples of Nature's unreliability in devising wajs and means towards a purpose. In surveying this region of the body we notice that the opening into the trachea, or windpipe, lies just heloio the opening into the oesophagus or gullet ; so that every breath of air through the nostrils must cross the path of food to the stomach, and, what is worse, every grain of food and every drop of liquid on its way to the stomach must pass over the opening into the trachea, thus endangering the life of man every time a mouthful of food is swallowed. That the danger is real, and not simply imaginary, is abundantly proven by the large number of deaths due to choking caused by the impaction of pieces^ of food, often relatively small, in the glottis during meals. Even when death does not result, the evil of tbe arrangement is apparent in the spasmodic coughing caused by the entrance o£ small crumbs or drops of liquid during meals.

GMng further down, a great deal of fault may be found with the digestive system — the " digestive jumble " it may be called — some of tbe vagaries of which cause boundless misery to millions of human beings. But the subject is not an agreeable one, though snch matters should not be overlooked altogether on that account. To the evolutionist these things, taksn as they are, are no stumbling block, for they form part of the proof which shows the unity of man and Nature. Other creatures and plants as well display peculiarities of the earae singular kind, and the plain inference to be drawn is that man, like the rest of living beings, is the direct outcome of evolutionary processes which go on for ever ; that, far from having ended long since, creation is still in pic g cess a3 in the past.