Part 1
Transcriber’s Notes
Text printed in italics has been transcribed _between underscores_. Small capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.
More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.
INTELLIGENCE IN PLANTS AND ANIMALS
BEING A NEW EDITION OF THE AUTHOR’S PRIVATELY ISSUED “SOUL AND IMMORTALITY”
BY THOMAS G. GENTRY, Sc. D.
AUTHOR OF “LIFE-HISTORIES OF BIRDS OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA,” “THE HOUSE SPARROW,” “NESTS AND EGGS OF BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES,” ETC., ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO. 1900
Copyright 1900, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
TO ALL HUMAN BEINGS WHO ARE GOOD AND KIND TO THE HUMBLEST OF GOD’S CREATURES THIS VOLUME IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
“Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.
“I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.”--Psalm 1:10, 11.
PREFACE.
Nothing is more charming to the mind of man than the study of Nature. Religion, moderation and magnanimity have been made a part of his inner being through her teachings, and the soul has been rescued by her influence from obscurity. No longer doth man grovel in the dust, seeking, animal-like, the gratification of low and base desires, as was his wont, but on the wings of thought is enabled to soar to the very gates of Heaven and hold communion with God.
Though made “a little lower than the angels,” yet, through the mighty play of forces that have been at work in the world, which we, in the latter half of this enlightened century, are just beginning to recognize and comprehend, he has been lifted from the mire of degradation and placed upon a higher social, intellectual, moral and spiritual level. Out of the animal, in the scheme of Deity, the spiritual system of things is to be elaborated, and not the animal out of the spiritual. This natural world, so to speak, is the raw material of the spiritual. Therefore, ere man can understand the spiritual, he must understand the natural. Though his knowledge was at first about material things, or such as pertained to natural phenomena, yet from this through the ages has been builded, little by little, that mountain-height of knowledge, intellectual and moral, which, if rightly directed, is to bring him into fellowship with Deity. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly,” or, Lord from heaven.
When is considered, therefore, the immense good which the study and investigation of nature have accomplished, it is not at all surprising that the literature on the subject should be markedly in the ascendant. Natural science bids fair to be in a preëminent degree the pursuit of the coming man. There is no end to the books that have been written upon the subject during the past few decades, if not by specialists, but by men and women who have been well informed and who have made themselves fully capable of contemplating understandingly the world which lies about them.
Our libraries are to-day quite affluent in books that are the handmaids of natural science. Michelet and Hugh Miller, in their day, opened glorious new worlds before a rising generation, and that generation is now doing excellent work under the inspiration of the impetus which it then received. Tait, Balfour Stewart, Dawson, Gray, McCook, Thompson, Scudder, Mrs. Treat, Olive Thorne Miller and others have done much to continue the interest, pleasure and enthusiasm awakened by those earlier writers, and even Darwin and Huxley themselves, in detailing their experiments, have not scorned to bring their thoughts within the range of narrower minds.
But in the popularization of natural science no man has done more than Rev. J. G. Wood in his numerous works. Not only have his writings created in thousands a taste for nature-studies, but they have been no less the means of cultivating the observation, awakening enthusiasm and directing effort in the lines of original research and discovery. Certainly no one, as his many writings so abundantly attest, possessed a larger fund of knowledge concerning the powers and capabilities of the lower animals than this author. Few knew our domestic animals better than he, and none was more capable of judging of the mental and moral _status_ which they should occupy in the world of animals. It is true that men and women, eminent in theology, literature and science, had expressed a belief in the idea that the “latent powers and capacities” of the lower animals might be developed in a future life, but no one had felt secure enough in this belief to warrant more than a passing thought or two upon the subject.
Bishop Butler, in his “Analogy of Religion,” undoubtedly believed the lower animals capable of a future life. In speaking of them in this connection in the opening of his work, he says: “It is said these observations are equally applicable to brutes; and it is thought an insuperable difficulty that they should be immortal, and by consequence capable of everlasting happiness. And this manner of expression is both invidious and weak; but the thing intended by it is really no difficulty at all, either in the way of natural or moral consideration.” Referring then to the undeveloped powers and capacities of the so-called brutes, the Bishop could perceive no reason why they should not attain their development in an existence beyond the earth-life. It was in pursuance of this same train of thought that Rev. J. G. Wood was led to show in a work, entitled “Man and Beast Here and Hereafter,” that the lower animals do possess those mental and moral characteristics--the attributes of reason, language, memory, moral responsibility, unselfishness and love--which we admit in man as belonging to the immortal spirit, rather than to the perishable body. Having previously cleared away the difficulties which certain passages in the Old Testament seemingly interposed, and proved that the Scriptures do not deny futurity of life to lower animals, he very naturally concluded that as man expects to retain these qualities in the future life there is every reason to suppose that they may share his immortality in the Hereafter as in the Now they are partakers of his mortal nature.
Few minds, unswayed by thoughts materialistic, can study the living works of God, whether vegetal or animal, and fail to be convinced that they, as living exponents of Divine conceptions, are as needful in the world of spirit as in the world of matter. While many are disposed to believe that man will share the future life with beast, bird, insect and such like, yet but few, if any, can be found who believe that tree and shrub and flower will be there to continue the life begun on earth and reach out to higher and fuller development. In announcing this belief, the author but expresses a conviction as deep as any that could occupy a human mind. The possession of soul and spirit can be predicated no less of plants than of man and the lower animals. They have all one breath or life and one spirit, and as such are living souls, living, breathing frames or bodies of life. From being living, breathing frames, and endowed with the same life and spirit as man and the lower animals, they have all one destiny, for “all go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” But of the new life which Christ came down to earth to proffer to man that he might inherit the kingdom of God. While to man it was only offered, and had for its purpose the uplifting and improvement of his earth-life by the promise of something higher and better to those who are accounted worthy, yet there can be no doubt that it was equally intended through his uplifting to place all the creatures of the earth over which he was given dominion by God upon a more elevated and nobler plane, so that those which had been profited in the earth-life by his beneficent influence should become partakers with him in the new life, when Christ shall “transfigure the body of our humiliation, that it may become of like form with the body of His glory, by the power of that which enables Him even to subdue all things to Himself.” As all existence is a unit, which the author has taken especial pains through the body of this book to impress upon the minds of his readers, it can hardly be conceived that an all-wise God, who is infinite in love, mercy and justice, would look to the preservation in a future state of but a very small part of the life which He has been instrumental in placing upon this earth. It would be more consistent with His attributes, and with the scheme of development of life upon our planet, whereby life has been progressive, the fittest only being allowed to survive, to have provided in the grand plan of redemption, not merely the salvation of the highest of earth-life, but of all life, the purest and the best, that would represent in the heaven-life, in spiritualized form, the highest living exponents of Divine ideas. No other belief accords so well with the teachings of science and philosophy. In its acceptance, for it makes all life related to the Divine life, can there be any hope of escape from materialism, that curse of the age.
THOMAS G. GENTRY, SC. D.
PHILADELPHIA, FEBRUARY 28, 1897.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface 1
Life and Its Conditions 9
Plants that Feed on Insects 16
Slime-Animals 32
Primitive Lasso-Throwers 36
Five-Fingered Jack on the Oyster 41
Earth-worms in History 48
Fiddler-and Hermit-Crabs 70
Funnel-Web Builder 77
Book-Lovers 86
You-ee-up 90
Tower-Building Cicada 95
Honey-Dew 104
Milch-Cows of the Ants 108
Living Artillery 111
Bright and Shining Ones 115
Queen of American Silk-Spinners 121
Basket-Carriers 126
Honey-Producing Caterpillars 132
Hibernating Butterflies 144
Leaf-Cutter Bee 149
Battle Between Ants 153
Nest-Building Fishes 158
Slippery as an Eel 168
Rana and Bufo 174
Our Natural Enemies 186
House-Bearing Reptiles 198
Summer Duck 204
American Woodcock 210
Piping Plover 218
Bob White 222
Ruffed Grouse 230
An Old Acquaintance 240
American Osprey 245
Turkey Buzzard 252
Rare and Curious Nests 263
Strange Friendship 279
Nature’s Little Store-Keeper 285
Canine Sagacity 290
Feline Intelligence 295
Bright Little Cebidae 301
Untutored Man 309
Living Souls 316
Consciousness in Plants 323
Mind in Animals 344
Life Progressive 404
Survival of the Fittest 426
Man’s Preëminence 469
Future Life 479
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
1 Portrait of Author Frontispiece 2 Venus’s Fly-trap 20 3 Round-Leaved Sundew 25 4 Protomyxa Feeding 34 5 Fresh-Water Hydra 37 6 Star-fish Opening an Oyster 45 7 Common Earth-worms 60 8 Fiddler-Crabs 72 9 Warty Hermit-Crabs 75
10 Agalena and Her Funnel-Web 79
11 Lepismas at Work 88
12 You-ee-up in His Den 91
13 Seventeen-year Cicada 97
14 New-born Cicada 99
15 Dome-like House of Cicada 101
16 Blossom of Cucurbita 105
17 Nest of Lasius 109
18 Brachinus Pursued by an Enemy 112
19 Common Tiger Beetle 117
20 American Luna Moth 123
21 House-builder Moth 129
22 Pseudargiolus Butterfly 134
23 Violacea Butterfly 138
24 Neglecta Butterfly 142
25 Mourning-Cloak Butterfly 146
26 Leaf-Cutter Bee at Work 150
27 Battle Between Ants 154
28 Nest of Common Sun-fish 159
29 Black-nosed Dace 163
30 Common American Eel 172
31 Rana Clamata, or Green Frog 177
32 Common American Toad 181
33 Northern Rattlesnake 189
34 Mother Black Snake 192
35 Summer Green Snake 195
36 Water Snake 196
37 Common Box Tortoise 201
38 Summer Ducks and Young 206
39 American Woodcock 214
40 Female Piping Plover 220
41 Home of Bob White 225
42 Ruffed Grouse in Spring-time 235
43 Mexican Wild Turkey 241
44 Nest of American Osprey 247
45 Female Turkey Buzzard Dining 259
46 Nest of the Robin 264
47 Red-winged Blackbird’s Nest 266
48 Double Nest of Orchard Oriole 268
49 Female Baltimore Oriole 270
50 Acadian Flycatchers 272
51 Long-billed Marsh Wrens 274
52 Golden-Crowned Kinglets 275
53 Lace Hammock of Parula Warbler 276
54 Three-story Nest of Yellow Warbler 278
55 Saw-whet Owl and Chickaree Squirrel 282
56 Hackee, or Chipping Squirrel 287
57 My Dog Frisky 292
58 Tom on Duty 297
59 Jack at Dinner 305
60 Australian at Home 311
61 Representative Life of Western Asia 319
62 Seedling of Winter Grape 325
63 Tip of Radicle of Seedling Maple 331
64 Wonderful Equine Intelligence 347
65 Papier-Maché Palace of the Hornet 353
66 Unsolicited and Unlooked-for Kindness 357
67 Exhibition of Grandeur 378
68 Four Orphaned Robins 389
69 Mated for Life 396
70 Evidence of Conjugal Affection 400
71 Life in the Primordial Sea 410
72 Carboniferous Times 412
73 Mesozoic Flora and Fauna 415
74 Palæolithic Men Attacking Cave Bear 448
75 Era of Mind and Heart 462
FULL PAGE PLATES.
From Photographs from Nature by A. RADCLYFFE DUGMORE.
1 Snapping Turtles Fighting Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
2 Crab Waiting for Food Under a Rock 74
3 Box-tortoise Feeding on Fungus 200
4 Woodcock on Nest (showing protective coloring) 212
5 Red-eyed Vireo’s Two-Storied Nest With Cow-bird’s egg beneath 264
6 Long-billed Marsh Wren’s Nest 272
7 Chipping Squirrels Feeding 286
8 Wood Thrush Setting 402
LIFE AND IMMORTALITY.
LIFE AND ITS CONDITIONS.
All natural objects, roughly divided, arrange themselves into three groups, constituting the so-called Mineral, Vegetable and Animal kingdoms. Mineral bodies are all devoid of life. They consist of either a single element, or, if combined, occur in nature in the form of simple compounds, composed of more than two or three elements. They are homogeneous in texture, or, when unmixed, formed of similar particles which have no definite relations to one another. In form they are either altogether indefinite, when they are said to be amorphous, or have a definite shape, called crystalline, in which case they are ordinarily bounded by plane surfaces and straight lines. When mineral bodies increase in size, as crystals may do, the increase is produced simply by accretion. They exhibit purely physical and chemical phenomena, and show no tendency to periodic changes of any kind. Fossils or petrifactions, which owe their existence and characters to beings which lived in former periods of the earth’s history, cannot, though made up of mineral matter, be properly said to belong to the mineral kingdom.
But objects belonging to the vegetable and animal kingdoms differ markedly from inert, lifeless, mineral matter. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen are the most important of the few chemical elements which enter into their composition, and these elements are combined into complex organic compounds, which always contain a large percentage of water, are very unstable, and prone to spontaneous decomposition. They are composed of heterogeneous, but related, parts, termed organs, the objects possessing them being called organized bodies. Some of the lowest forms of animals have bodies whose substance is so uniform that they exhibit no definite organs, but this exception does not affect the general value of this distinction. They are always more or less definite in shape, presenting concave and convex surfaces, and being limited by curved lines. When they increase in size, or grow, as we properly term it, it is not by the addition of particles from the outside, but by the reception of foreign matter into their interior and its consequent assimilation. Certain periodic changes, which follow a definite and discoverable order, are invariably passed through by organized bodies. These changes constitute what is known as life. All the objects, then, which fulfil these conditions are said to be alive, and they all appertain either to the vegetable or the animal kingdom. The study of living objects, no matter to which kingdom they belong, is therefore conveniently called by the general name of Biology, which means a discourse on life. And as all living objects may be referred to one or other of these kingdoms, so Biology may be divided into Botany, which treats of plants, and Zoölogy, which treats of animals.
Now that we have divided all organized bodies into plants and animals, it becomes necessary to inquire into the differences which subsist between them, and which will enable us to separate the kindred sciences of Botany and Zoölogy. Nothing was thought so easy by older observers than the determination of the animal or vegetable nature of any given organism, but, in point of fact, no hard-and-fast line can be drawn, in the existing state of our knowledge, between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and it is sometimes difficult, or even impossible, to decide with positiveness whether we are dealing with a plant or an animal. In the higher orders of the two kingdoms there is no difficulty in reaching a decision, the higher animals being readily separated from the higher plants by the possession of a nervous system, of a locomotive power which can be voluntarily exercised, and of an internal cavity adapted for the reception and digestion of solid food. No so-called nervous system or organs of sense are possessed by the higher plants, although some of them doubtlessly manifest conscious and intelligent action, nor are they capable of voluntary changes of place, nor provided with any definite internal cavity, their food being generally fluid or gaseous.