Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 379 pages of information about Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism.

Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 379 pages of information about Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism.

First as to sensitiveness and movement.  Sensitiveness is manifested by movement or change of form in response to an external impression.  The sensitiveness in the sundew is all in the gland which surmounts the tentacle.  To incite movement or other action, it is necessary that the gland itself should be reached.  Anything laid on the surface of the viscid drop, the spherule of clear, glairy liquid which it secretes, produces no effect unless it sinks through to the gland; or unless the substance is soluble and reaches it in solution, which, in the case of certain substances, has the same effect.  But the glands themselves do not move, nor does any neighboring portion of the tentacle.  The outer and longer tentacles bend inward (toward the centre of the leaf) promptly, when the gland is irritated or stimulated, sweeping through an arc of 1800 or less, or more—­the quickness and the extent of the inflection depending, in equally vigorous leaves, upon the amount of irritation or stimulation, and also upon its kind.  A tentacle with a particle of raw meat on its gland sometimes visibly begins to bend in ten seconds, becomes strongly incurved in five minutes, and its tip reaches the centre of the leaf in half an hour; but this is a case of extreme rapidity.  A particle of cinder, chalk, or sand, will also incite the bending, if actually brought in contact with the gland, not merely resting on the drop; but the inflection is then much less pronounced and more transient.  Even a bit of thin human hair, only 1/8000 of an inch in length, weighing only the 1/78740 of a grain, and largely supported by the viscid secretion, suffices to induce movement; but, on the other hand, one or two momentary, although rude, touches with a hard object produce no effect, although a repeated touch or the slightest pressure, such as that of a gnat’s foot, prolonged for a short time, causes bending.  The seat of the movement is wholly or nearly confined to a portion of the lower part of the tentacle, above the base, where local irritation produces not the slightest effect.  The movement takes place only in response to some impression made upon its own gland at the distant extremity, or upon other glands far more remote.  For if one of these members suffers irritation the others sympathize with it.  Very noteworthy is the correlation between the central tentacles, upon which an insect is most likely to alight, and these external and larger ones, which, in proportion to their distance from the centre, take the larger share in the movement.  The shorter central ones do not move at all when a bit of meat, or a crushed fly, or a particle of a salt of ammonia, or the like, is placed upon them; but they transmit their excitation across the leaf to the surrounding tentacles on all sides; and they, although absolutely untouched, as they successively receive the mysterious impulse, bend strongly inward, just as they do when their own glands are excited.  Whenever a tentacle bends in obedience to an impulse from its own gland,

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Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.