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    extended spongeole . They are so extremely small that millions may exist in a drop , yet Ehrenburg , a German physiologist , after long and patient experiment , has succeeded in ascertaining their structure . He put into the water in which they existed pure carmine , indigo , or sap green , and in a few minutes he found they had fed upon it , and that the coloured food was transmitted

    to certain points of their bodies , always the same in the same tribes , but different in others , and that they had not only one but many stomachs , varying in number from the Monas Termo , the being at the bottom of the animal scale which has six or seven , to some which have thirty . In the higher animals , the existence of an internal reservoir for the food is evident to all . They are all provided with a stomach and a set of absorbing vessels , the

    mouths of which , minute in size but countless in number , opening into it , absorb the digested aliment just as the spongeoles of the plant absorb from the soil . Thus the function of nutrition is put in relation with that of locomotion : but the expedient requires many more complications . If the food has to be transmitted to an isolated organ within the body , means must be provided to

    convey it there , and there must be organs for deglutition ; means to carry it out to the system , and there must be organs for circulation ; means to bring it into contact with the air to be rendered proper nutriment , and there must be organs for respiration ; means to get rid of what is not nutritious , and there must be organs for excretion . But this is not all . Locomotion cannot be exercised

    but with inevitable destruction , without perception . Sensation is necessary to volition , and volition of course to voluntary motion ; besides that nutrition , as performed by a being possessed of locomotion , requires the addition of sensation on its own account , for the food must be sought for , apprehended , and conveyed into the body by a voluntary act .

    The range of function necessarily increasing with the multiplication of organs and the extension of functions , is another cause of complication of structure . The apparatus for respiration , simple in the lower animals , and exceedingly complex in the higher , afforded an apt illustration of this ; and that of sensation one still more interesting .

    * Nothing can be stricter than the proportion between the complexity of the apparatus of sensation , and the range of the function of sensation . The greater the number of the senses , the greater the number of the organs of sense ;—the more accurate and varied the impressions conveyed by each , the more complex the structure of the

    instruments by which they are communicated . The more extended the range of the intellectual operations , the larger the bulk of the brain , the greater the number of its distinct parts and the more exquisite the organization of each . From the point in the animal scale in which the brain first becomes distinctly visible , up to man , the basis of the organ is the same ; but as the range of its functions extends ,

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    Functions of the Animal Economy . 53

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 53, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/53/