George Washington Cable - "The Cavalier"

J. Arthur Thomson - "The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4)"

Florence Holbrook - "Northland Heroes"

Emily Dickinson - "Poems [Series 1]"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4)

J >> J. Arthur Thomson >> The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4)




[Illustration: DEAD-LEAF BUTTERFLY (_Kallima Inachis_) FROM INDIA

It is conspicuous on its upper surface, but when it settles down on a
twig and shows the underside of its wings it is practically invisible.
The colouring of the under surface of the wings is like that of the
withering leaf; there are spots like fungas spots; and the venation of
the wings suggests the mid-rib and veins of the leaf. A, showing upper
surface; B, showing under surface; C, a leaf.]

[Illustration: PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN A SMALL SPIDER (_to the
left_) AND AN ANT (_to the right_)

As ants are much dreaded, it is probably profitable to the spider to be
like an ant. It will be noted that the spider has four pairs of legs and
no feelers, whereas the ant has three pairs of legs and a pair of
feelers.]

[Illustration: _Photo: J. J. Ward, F.E.S._

THE WASP BEETLE, WHICH, WHEN MOVING AMONGST THE BRANCHES GIVES A
WASP-LIKE IMPRESSION]

[Illustration: HERMIT-CRAB WITH PARTNER SEA-ANEMONES

Hermit-crabs hide their soft tail in the shell of a whelk or some other
sea-snail. But some hermit-crabs place sea-anemones on the back of their
borrowed shell. The sea-anemones mask the hermit-crab and their
tentacles can sting. As for the sea-anemones, they are carried about by
the hermit-crab and they get crumbs from its table. This kind of
mutually beneficial external partnership is called commensalism, i.e.
eating at the same table.]

[Illustration: _Photo: G. P. Duffus._

CUCKOO-SPIT

The white mass in the centre of the picture is a soapy froth which the
young frog-hopper makes, and within which it lies safe both from the
heat of the sun and almost all enemies. After sojourning for a time in
the cuckoo-spit, the frog-hopper becomes a winged insect.]


Masking

The episode in Scottish history called "The Walking Wood of Birnam,"
when the advancing troop masked their approach by cutting down branches
of the trees, has had its counterpart in many countries. But it is also
enacted on the seashore. There are many kinds of crabs that put on
disguise with what looks like deliberateness. The sand-crab takes a
piece of seaweed, nibbles at the end of it, and then rubs it on the back
of the carapace or on the legs so that it fixes to the bristles. As the
seaweed continues to live, the crab soon has a little garden on its back
which masks the crab's real nature. It is most effective camouflaging,
but if the crab continues to grow it has to moult, and that means losing
the disguise. It is then necessary to make a new one. The crab must have
on the shore something corresponding to a reputation; that is to say,
other animals are clearly or dimly aware that the crab is a voracious
and combative creature. How useful to the crab, then, to have its
appearance cloaked by a growth of innocent seaweed, or sponge, or
zoophyte. It will enable the creature to sneak upon its victims or to
escape the attention of its own enemies.

If a narrow-beaked crab is cleaned artificially it will proceed to
clothe itself again, the habit has become instinctive; and it must be
admitted that while a particular crab prefers a particular kind of
seaweed for its dress, it will cover itself with unsuitable and even
conspicuous material, such as pieces of coloured cloth, if nothing
better is available. The disguise differs greatly, for one crab is
masked by a brightly coloured and unpalatable sponge densely packed
with flinty needles; another cuts off the tunic of a sea-squirt and
throws it over its shoulders; another trundles about a bivalve shell.
The facts recall the familiar case of the hermit-crab, which protects
its soft tail by tucking it into the empty shell of a periwinkle or a
whelk or some other sea-snail, and that case leads on to the elaboration
known as commensalism, where the hermit-crab fixes sea-anemones on the
back of its borrowed house. The advantage here is beyond that of
masking, for the sea-anemone can sting, which is a useful quality in a
partner. That this second advantage may become the main one is evident
in several cases where the sea-anemone is borne, just like a weapon, on
each of the crustacean's great claws. Moreover, as the term commensalism
(eating at the same table) suggests, the partnership is _mutually_
beneficial. For the sea-anemone is carried about by the hermit-crab, and
it doubtless gets its share of crumbs from its partner's frequent meals.
There is a very interesting sidelight on the mutual benefit in the case
of a dislodged sea-anemone which sulked for a while and then waited in a
state of preparedness until a hermit-crab passed by and touched it.
Whereupon the sea-anemone gripped and slowly worked itself up on to the
back of the shell.


Sec. 6

Other Kinds of Elusiveness

There are various kinds of disguise which are not readily classified. A
troop of cuttlefish swimming in the sea is a beautiful sight. They keep
time with one another in their movements and they show the same change
of colour almost at the same moment. They are suddenly attacked,
however, by a small shark, and then comes a simultaneous discharge of
sepia from their ink-bags. There are clouds of ink in the clear water,
for, as Professor Hickson puts it, the cuttlefishes have thrown dust in
the eyes of their enemies. One can see a newborn cuttlefish do this a
minute after it escapes from the egg.

Very beautiful is the way in which many birds, like our common
chaffinch, disguise the outside of their nest with moss and lichen and
other trifles felted together, so that the cradle is as inconspicuous as
possible. There seems to be a touch of art in fastening pieces of
spider's web on the outside of a nest!

How curious is the case of the tree-sloth of South American forests,
that walks slowly, back downwards, along the undersides of the branches,
hanging on by its long, curved fingers and toes. It is a nocturnal
animal, and therefore not in special danger, but when resting during the
day it is almost invisible because its shaggy hair is so like certain
lichens and other growths on the branches. But the protective
resemblance is enhanced by the presence of a green alga, which actually
lives on the surface of the sloth's hairs--an alga like the one that
makes tree-stems and gate-posts green in damp weather.

There is no commoner sight in the early summer than the cuckoo-spit on
the grasses and herbage by the wayside. It is conspicuous and yet it is
said to be left severely alone by almost all creatures. In some way it
must be a disguise. It is a sort of soap made by the activity of small
frog-hoppers while they are still in the wingless larval stage, before
they begin to hop. The insect pierces with its sharp mouth-parts the
skin of the plant and sucks in sweet sap which by and by overflows over
its body. It works its body up and down many times, whipping in air,
which mixes with the sugary sap, reminding one of how "whipped egg" is
made. But along with the sugary sap and the air, there is a little
ferment from the food-canal and a little wax from glands on the skin,
and the four things mixed together make a kind of soap which lasts
through the heat of the day.

There are many other modes of disguise besides those which we have been
able to illustrate. Indeed, the biggest fact is that there are so many,
for it brings us back to the idea that life is not an easy business. It
is true, as Walt Whitman says, that animals do not sweat and whine about
their condition; perhaps it is true, as he says, that not one is
unhappy over the whole earth. But there is another truth, that this
world is not a place for the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, and that
when a creature has not armour or weapons or cleverness it must find
some path of safety or go back. One of these paths of safety is
disguise, and we have illustrated its evolution.




V

THE ASCENT OF MAN




THE ASCENT OF MAN


Sec. 1

No one thinks less of Sir Isaac Newton because he was born as a very
puny infant, and no one should think less of the human race because it
sprang from a stock of arboreal mammals. There is no doubt as to man's
apartness from the rest of creation when he is seen at his best--"a
little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour." "What a
piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in
form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension so like a God." Nevertheless, all the facts point to his
affiliation to the stock to which monkeys and apes also belong. Not,
indeed, that man is descended from any living ape or monkey; it is
rather that he and they have sprung from a common ancestry--are branches
of the same stem. This conclusion is so momentous that the reasons for
accepting it must be carefully considered. They were expounded with
masterly skill in Darwin's _Descent of Man_ in 1871--a book which was
but an expansion of a chapter in _The Origin of Species_ (1859).


Anatomical Proof of Man's Relationship with a Simian Stock

The anatomical structure of man is closely similar to that of the
anthropoid apes--the gorilla, the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gibbon.
Bone for bone, muscle for muscle, blood-vessel for blood-vessel, nerve
for nerve, man and ape agree. As the conservative anatomist, Sir
Richard Owen, said, there is between them "an all-pervading similitude
of structure." Differences, of course, there are, but they are not
momentous except man's big brain, which may be three times as heavy as
that of a gorilla. The average human brain weighs about 48 ounces; the
gorilla brain does not exceed 20 ounces at its best. The capacity of the
human skull is never less than 55 cubic inches; in the orang and the
chimpanzee the figures are 26 and 27-1/2 respectively. We are not
suggesting that the most distinctive features of man are such as can be
measured and weighed, but it is important to notice that the main seat
of his mental powers is physically far ahead of that of the highest of
the anthropoid apes.

Man alone is thoroughly erect after his infancy is past; his head
weighted with the heavy brain does not droop forward as the ape's does;
with his erect attitude there is perhaps to be associated his more
highly developed vocal organs. Compared with an anthropoid ape, man has
a bigger and more upright forehead, a less protrusive face region,
smaller cheek-bones and eyebrow ridges, and more uniform teeth. He is
almost unique in having a chin. Man plants the sole of his foot flat on
the ground, his big toe is usually in a line with the other toes, and he
has a better heel than any monkey has. The change in the shape of the
head is to be thought of in connection with the enlargement of the
brain, and also in connection with the natural reduction of the muzzle
region when the hand was freed from being an organ of support and became
suited for grasping the food and conveying it to the mouth.

Everyone is familiar in man's clothing with traces of the past
persisting in the present, though their use has long since disappeared.
There are buttons on the back of the waist of the morning coat to which
the tails of the coat used to be fastened up, and there are buttons,
occasionally with buttonholes, at the wrist which were once useful in
turning up the sleeve. The same is true of man's body, which is a
veritable museum of relics. Some anatomists have made out a list of
over a hundred of these _vestigial_ structures, and though this number
is perhaps too high, there is no doubt that the list is long. In the
inner upper corner of the eye there is a minute tag--but larger in some
races than in others--which is the last dwindling relic of the third
eyelid, used in cleaning the front of the eye, which most mammals
possess in a large and well-developed form. It can be easily seen, for
instance, in ox and rabbit. In man and in monkeys it has become a
useless vestige, and the dwindling must be associated with the fact that
the upper eyelid is much more mobile in man and monkeys than in the
other mammals. The vestigial third eyelid in man is enough of itself to
prove his relationship with the mammals, but it is only one example out
of many. Some of these are discussed in the article dealing with the
human body, but we may mention the vestigial muscles going to the
ear-trumpet, man's dwindling counterpart of the skin-twitching muscle
which we see a horse use when he jerks a fly off his flanks, and the
short tail which in the seven-weeks-old human embryo is actually longer
than the leg. Without committing ourselves to a belief in the entire
uselessness of the vermiform appendix, which grows out as a blind alley
at the junction of the small intestine with the large, we are safe in
saying that it is a dwindling structure--the remains of a blind gut
which must have been capacious and useful in ancestral forms. In some
mammals, like the rabbit, the blind gut is the bulkiest structure in the
body, and bears the vermiform appendix at its far end. In man the
appendix alone is left, and it tells its tale. It is interesting to
notice that it is usually longer in the orang than in man, and that it
is very variable, as dwindling structures tend to be. One of the
unpleasant expressions of this variability is the liability to go wrong:
hence appendicitis. Now these vestigial structures are, as Darwin said,
like the unsounded, i.e. functionless, letters in words, such as the _o_
in "leopard," the _b_ in "doubt," the _g_ in "reign." They are of no
use, but they tell us something of the history of the words. So do man's
vestigial structures reveal his pedigree. They must have an historical
or evolutionary significance. No other interpretation is possible.

[Illustration: _Photo: New York Zoological Park._

CHIMPANZEE, SITTING

The head shows certain facial characteristics, e.g. the beetling eyebrow
ridges, which were marked in the Neanderthal race of men. Note the
shortening of the thumb and the enlargement of the big toe.]

[Illustration: _Photo: New York Zoological Park._

CHIMPANZEE, ILLUSTRATING WALKING POWERS

Note the great length of the arms and the relative shortness of the
legs.]

[Illustration: SURFACE VIEW OF THE BRAINS OF MAN (1) AND CHIMPANZEE (2)

The human brain is much larger and heavier, more dome-like, and with
much more numerous and complicated convolutions.]

[Illustration: _Photo: New York Zoological Park._

SIDE-VIEW OF CHIMPANZEE'S HEAD.

(Compare with opposite picture.)]

[Illustration: _After a model by J. H. McGregor._

PROFILE VIEW OF HEAD OF PITHECANTHROPUS, THE JAVA APE MAN, RECONSTRUCTED
FROM THE SKULL-CAP.]

[Illustration: THE FLIPPER OF A WHALE AND THE HAND OF A MAN

In the bones and in their arrangement there is a close resemblance in
the two cases, yet the outcome is very different. The multiplication of
finger joints in the whale is a striking feature.]

Some men, oftener than women, show on the inturned margin of the
ear-trumpet or pinna, a little conical projection of great interest. It
is a vestige of the tip of the pointed ear of lower mammals, and it is
well named _Darwin's point_. It was he who described it as a "surviving
symbol of the stirring times and dangerous days of man's animal youth."


Sec. 2

Physiological Proof of Man's Relationship with a Simian Stock

The everyday functions of the human body are practically the same as
those of the anthropoid ape, and similar disorders are common to both.
Monkeys may be infected with certain microbes to which man is peculiarly
liable, such as the bacillus of tuberculosis. Darwin showed that various
human gestures and facial expressions have their counterparts in
monkeys. The sneering curl of the upper lip, which tends to expose the
canine tooth, is a case in point, though it may be seen in many other
mammals besides monkeys--in dogs, for instance, which are at some
considerable distance from the simian branch to which man's ancestors
belonged.

When human blood is transfused into a dog or even a monkey, it behaves
in a hostile way to the other blood, bringing about a destruction of the
red blood corpuscles. But when it is transfused into a chimpanzee there
is an harmonious mingling of the two. This is a very literal
demonstration of man's blood-relationship with the higher apes. But
there is a finer form of the same experiment. When the blood-fluid (or
serum) of a rabbit, which has had human blood injected into it, is
mingled with human blood, it forms a cloudy precipitate. It forms almost
as marked a precipitate when it is mingled with the blood of an
anthropoid ape. But when it is mingled with the blood of an American
monkey there is only a slight clouding after a considerable time and
no actual precipitate. When it is added to the blood of one of the
distantly related "half-monkeys" or lemurs there is no reaction or only
a very weak one. With the blood of mammals off the simian line
altogether there is no reaction at all. Thus, as a distinguished
anthropologist, Professor Schwalbe, has said: "We have in this not only
a proof of the literal blood-relationship between man and apes, but the
degree of relationship with the different main groups of apes can be
determined beyond possibility of mistake." We can imagine how this
modern line of experiment would have delighted Darwin.

[Illustration: THE GORILLA, INHABITING THE FOREST TRACT OF THE GABOON IN
AFRICA

A full-grown individual stands about 5 feet high. The gait is shuffling,
the strength enormous, the diet mainly vegetarian, the temper rather
ferocious.]


Embryological Proof of Man's Relationship with a Simian Stock

In his individual development, man does in some measure climb up his own
genealogical tree. Stages in the development of the body during its nine
months of ante-natal life are closely similar to stages in the
development of the anthropoid embryo. Babies born in times of famine or
siege are sometimes, as it were, imperfectly finished, and sometimes
have what may be described as monkeyish features and ways. A visit to an
institution for the care of children who show arrested, defective, or
disturbed development leaves one sadly impressed with the risk of
slipping down the rungs of the steep ladder of evolution; and even in
adults the occurrence of serious nervous disturbance, such as
"shell-shock," is sometimes marked by relapses to animal ways. It is a
familiar fact that a normal baby reveals the past in its surprising
power of grip, and the careful experiments of Dr. Louis Robinson showed
that an infant three weeks old could support its own weight for over two
minutes, holding on to a horizontal bar. "In many cases no sign of
distress is evinced and no cry uttered, until the grasp begins to give
way." This persistent grasp probably points back to the time when the
baby had to cling to its arboreal mother. The human tail is represented
in the adult by a fusion of four or five vertebrae forming the "coccyx"
at the end of the backbone, and is normally concealed beneath the
flesh, but in the embryo the tail projects freely and is movable. Up to
the sixth month of the ante-natal sleep the body is covered, all but the
palms and soles, with longish hair (the lanugo), which usually
disappears before birth. This is a stage in the normal development,
which is reasonably interpreted as a recapitulation of a stage in the
racial evolution. We draw this inference when we find that the unborn
offspring of an almost hairless whale has an abundant representation of
hairs; we must draw a similar inference in the case of man.

It must be noticed that there are two serious errors in the careless
statement often made that man in his development is at one time like a
little fish, at a later stage like a little reptile, at a later stage
like a little primitive mammal, and eventually like a little monkey. The
first error here is that the comparison should be made with
_embryo_-fish, _embryo_-reptile, _embryo_-mammal, and so on. It is in
the making of the embryos that the great resemblance lies. When the
human embryo shows the laying down of the essential vertebrate
characters, such as brain and spinal cord, then it is closely comparable
to the embryo of a lower vertebrate at a similar stage. When, at a
subsequent stage, its heart, for instance, is about to become a
four-chambered mammalian heart, it is closely comparable to the heart
of, let us say, a turtle, which never becomes more than three-chambered.
The point is that in the making of the organs of the body, say brain and
kidneys, the embryo of man pursues a path closely corresponding to the
path followed by the embryos of other backboned animals lower in the
scale, but at successive stages it parts company with these, with the
lowest first and so on in succession. A human embryo is never like a
little reptile, but the developing organs pass through stages which very
closely resemble the corresponding stages in lower types which are in a
general way ancestral.

The second error is that every kind of animal, man included, has from
the first a certain individuality, with peculiar characteristics which
are all its own. This is expressed by the somewhat difficult word
_specificity_, which just means that every species is itself and no
other. So in the development of the human embryo, while there are close
resemblances to the embryos of apes, monkeys, other mammals, and even,
at earlier stages still, to the embryos of reptile and fish, it has to
be admitted that we are dealing from first to last with a human embryo
with peculiarities of its own.

[Illustration: "DARWIN'S POINT" ON HUMAN EAR (MARKED D.P.)

It corresponds to the tip (T) of the ear of an ordinary mammal, as shown
in the hare's ear below. In the young orang the part corresponding to
Darwin's point is still at the tip of the ear.]

[Illustration: _Photo: J. Russell & Sons._

PROFESSOR SIR ARTHUR KEITH, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.

Conservator of the Museum and Hunterian Professor, Royal College of
Surgeons of England. One of the foremost living anthropologists and a
leading authority on the antiquity of man.]

[Illustration: _After T. H. Huxley (by permission of Messrs.
Macmillan)._

SKELETONS OF THE GIBBON, ORANG, CHIMPANZEE, GORILLA, MAN

Photographically reduced from diagrams of the natural size (except that
of the gibbon, which was twice as large as nature) drawn by Mr.
Waterhouse Hawkins from specimens in the Museum of the Royal College of
Surgeons.]

Every human being begins his or her life as a single cell--a fertilised
egg-cell, a treasure-house of all the ages. For in this living
microcosm, only a small fraction (1/125) of an inch in diameter, there
is condensed--who can imagine how?--all the natural inheritance of man,
all the legacy of his parentage, of his ancestry, of his long pre-human
pedigree. Darwin called the pinhead brain of the ant the most marvellous
atom of matter in the world, but the human ovum is more marvellous
still. It has more possibilities in it than any other thing, yet without
fertilisation it will die. The fertilised ovum divides and redivides;
there results a ball of cells and a sack of cells; gradually division of
labour becomes the rule; there is a laying down of nervous system and
food-canal, muscular system and skeleton, and so proceeds what is
learnedly called differentiation. Out of the apparently simple there
emerges the obviously complex. As Aristotle observed more than two
thousand years ago, in the developing egg of the hen there soon appears
the beating heart! There is nothing like this in the non-living world.
But to return to the developing human embryo, there is formed from and
above the embryonic food-canal a skeletal rod, which is called the
notochord. It thrills the imagination to learn that this is the only
supporting axis that the lower orders of the backboned race possess. The
curious thing is that it does not become the backbone, which is
certainly one of the essential features of the vertebrate race. The
notochord is the supporting axis of the pioneer backboned animals,
namely the Lancelets and the Round-mouths (Cyclostomes), such as the
Lamprey. They have no backbone in the strict sense, but they have this
notochord. It can easily be dissected out in the lamprey--a long gristly
rod. It is surrounded by a sheath which becomes the backbone of most
fishes and of all higher animals. The interesting point is that although
the notochord is only a vestige in the adults of these types, it is
never absent from the embryo. It occurs even in man, a short-lived relic
of the primeval supporting axis of the body. It comes and then it goes,
leaving only minute traces in the adult. We cannot say that it is of any
use, unless it serves as a stimulus to the development of its
substitute, the backbone. It is only a piece of preliminary scaffolding,
but there is no more eloquent instance of the living hand of the past.

One other instance must suffice of what Professor Lull calls the
wonderful changes wrought in the dark of the ante-natal period, which
recapitulate in rapid abbreviation the great evolutionary steps which
were taken by man's ancestors "during the long night of the geological
past." On the sides of the neck of the human embryo there are four pairs
of slits, the "visceral clefts," openings from the beginning of the
food-canals to the surface. There is no doubt as to their significance.
They correspond to the gill-slits of fishes and tadpoles. Yet in
reptiles, birds, and mammals they have no connection with breathing,
which is their function in fishes and amphibians. Indeed, they are not
of any use at all, except that the first becomes the Eustachian tube
bringing the ear-passage into connection with the back of the mouth, and
that the second and third have to do with the development of a curious
organ called the thymus gland. Persistent, nevertheless, these
gill-slits are, recalling even in man an aquatic ancestry of many
millions of years ago.

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