Part 14 (1/2)

With these physiological facts ascertained, let us proceed to the determination of the actual age of our n.o.ble Dauntelah. The molar in present use has a length of about nine inches, and a diameter of three and a half. Its crown is crossed by about eighteen enamel-plates; of which the anterior ones are much worn away, while the hinder ones can scarcely be counted with precision, as they have not wholly cut their way through the gum. These characters indicate the fifth molar (or set of molars) of the whole life-series. And the following facts will help us now to fix the actual age, at least approximately.

The first molar cuts the gum at two weeks old, is in full use at three months, and is shed in the course of the second year. The second cuts the gum at about six months, and is shed in the fifth year. The third appears at two years, is in full use about the fifth year, and finally disappears about the ninth year. In the sixth year the fourth breaks from the gum, and lasts till the animal's twenty-fifth year. The fifth cuts the gum at the twentieth year, is entirely exposed soon after the fortieth, and is thrust out about the sixtieth year, by the advance of the sixth molar, which appears at about fifty years old, and probably lasts for half a century more. If others succeed this,--a seventh and even an eighth, as some a.s.sert,--these would carry on the Elephant's life to two or three centuries, in accordance with an ancient opinion, which is in some degree countenanced by modern observations.

To come back, then, to the case before us, since the fifth molar has its fore part much worn, and the posterior laminae scarcely yet protruded from the gum, it follows that this Elephant is now not far from the fortieth year of his life, a deduction which well agrees with the dimensions of his tusks, and his appearance of mature vigour.

Can you detect a flaw in this reasoning? And yet how baseless the conclusion, which a.s.signs a past existence of forty years to a creature called into existence this very day.

X.

PARALLELS AND PRECEDENTS.

(_Man._)

”Once, in the flight of ages past, There lived a Man,--and who was he?

Mortal, howe'er thy lot be cast, That man resembled thee.”--MONTGOMERY.

We have knocked at the doors of the vegetable world, asking our questions; then at those of the lower tribes of the brute creation, and now at those of the higher forms; and we have received but one answer,--varying, indeed, in terms, but essentially the same in meaning,--from all. And now we have one more application to make; we have, still in our ideal peregrination, to seek out the newly-created form of our first progenitor, the primal Head of the Human Race.

And here we behold him; not like the beasts that perish, but--

”Of far n.o.bler shape, erect and tall, G.o.dlike erect, with native honour clad, In naked majesty, as lord of all.”

The definitive question before us is this: Does the body of the Man just created present us with any evidences of a past existence, and if so, what are they? And that we may rightly judge of the matter, we will, as on former occasions, call in the aid of a skilful and experienced physiologist, to whom we will distinctly put the question.

_The Physiologist's Report._

In replying to your inquiry concerning the proofs of a past existence in the Man before me, I must treat of him as a mere animal,--a creature having an organic being.

And, first, I find every part of the surface of his body possessing a nearly uniform temperature, which is higher than that of the surrounding atmosphere. There is, moreover, on all parts of the body, a tinge of redness, more or less vivid in certain regions. The heat, and the carnation tinge, alike indicate the presence of blood, arterial blood, diffused throughout, and, in particular, occupying the capillaries of the superficial parts. Every drop of this blood is preceded and succeeded by other drops, every one of which has been impelled out of the heart by its constant contractions.

But the very existence of this blood supposes the pre-existence of chyle and lymph, out of which it has been constructed. The chyle was formed out of chyme, changed by the action of the pancreatic and biliary secretions. Chyme is food, chemically altered by the action of the gastric juice. So that the blood, now coursing through the arteries and veins, implies the previous process of the reception of food. And these pancreatic and biliary secretions, which are essential to the conversion of chyme into chyle,--and therefore into blood,--do you ask their origin? They were prepared, the one by the pancreas, the other by the liver, from blood already existing,--blood _previously formed_ of chyle with the addition of bile, &c.--and so indefinitely.

Again, the blood in these capillary arteries is of a bright scarlet hue, which it derives from its being charged with oxygen. This it received in the _lungs_, parting at the same time with the carbon which it had taken up in its former course. The lungs then must have existed _before_ the blood could be where and what it is, viz. arterial blood in the capillaries of the extremities; before it was driven out of the heart, since it was transmitted from the lungs through the pulmonary veins into the heart, thence to be pumped into the arterial system.

But since all the tissues of the body are formed from the blood, the lungs were dependent on already-existing blood for their existence. And as the formative and nutrient power is lodged exclusively in _arterial_ blood, the very blood out of which the lungs were organized was dependent on lungs for oxygenation, without which it would have been effete and useless.

Here then is a cycle of which I cannot trace the beginning.

But further. On the extremities of the fingers and of the toes, there are broad h.o.r.n.y _nails_. These I trace down to the curved line where they issue from beneath the skin, and whence every particle of each nail has issued in succession. They are composed of several strata of polygonal cells, which have all grown in reduplications of the skin, forming compressed curved sheaths (_follicles_); stratum after stratum of cells having been added to the base-line, as the nail perpetually grew forwards. About three months elapse from the emergence of a given stratum of cells, before that stratum becomes terminal; and therefore each of these twenty-four finger- and toe-nails is a witness to three months' past existence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROWTH OF HAIR (_magnified_).]

The head is clothed with luxuriant _hair_, composed of a mult.i.tude of individual fibres, each of which is an epidermic appendage, essentially similar to the nails. Every hair is contained at its basal extremity in a delicate follicle, where it terminates around a soft vascular bulb, made up of blood-vessels and nerves. On the surface of this living bulb the h.o.r.n.y substance is continually secreted and deposited in layers, each of which in succession pushes forward those previously made, till the tip extrudes from the follicle of the skin, after which it continues to grow in the same way, as an external hair. The tip is gradually worn away; and thus the constant growth cannot, in general, cause it to exceed a certain given length. Each of the thousands of hairs with which this majestic head is clothed, bears witness to past time; and as the increase of hair is about an inch per month, and as this hair is about four inches in length, we have here thousands of witnesses to at least four months of previous history.

The bones which make up the firm and stately fabric about which this human body is built, are no productions of a day. Long before this they existed in the form of cartilages. In these, minute arteries began to deposit particles of phosphate of lime, around certain centres of ossification, doing their work in a determinate order, and in regular lines, so as to form continuous fibres. These fibres, aggregated, and connected by others, soon formed a texture of spicula or thin plates.

Now take as an example a cylindrical hollow bone, as that of the thigh.