Great and small things

Front matter

i

POPULAR WORKS ON SCIENCE BY SIR RAY LANKESTER, K.C.B., F.R.S.

Published by Methuen & Co. Ltd.

Preface

THE title of this little book is, I venture to say, appropriate to a miscellaneous collection of short papers in which subjects of widely differing interest are briefly brought to the reader’s attention. They all relate to the study of living things ranging from the phagocyte to the gorilla, from the pond-snail to the Russian giant, from facts about longevity to theories as to human progress and the cruelty of Nature. Most of the chapters were written originally for publication in daily and weekly journals and have been now to some extent re-written and illustrated by text figures for the present volume.

I am indebted to the proprietor of The Field for the two portraits of John the Gorilla which illustrate my article on that much-loved animal — published in that paper.

E. RAY LANKESTER

December 1922 b

V

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. The Gorilla of Sloane Street . . i

II. Science and the Film . . . .16

Chapter II

IT is only equitable that the great industry of cinema-film production should give valuable help to the investigation of nature — since it owes its own existence to the persevering inquiries of scientific men seeking to ascertain exactly the movements of the legs of the horse when engaged in that rapid action which is called the “ gallop.” •

About forty years ago, photography was advanced

to a new position of power by two discoveries — that of

the dry plate or film and that of the means of rendering

instantaneous exposure effective in place of the long

exposure previously necessary. Not only was the

venerable science of astronomy rejuvenated by these

discoveries, which enabled the astronomer to print the

photographic records of hundreds of thousands of stars

invisible to the human eye, even when fortified by the

most powerful telescopes, but the study of movement of

all kinds — from that of the waves of the sea, to that of

the limbs of the swiftest animals, including the most

fleeting expressions of the human face and the flickering

of the “ cilia ” of the minutest animalcules scarcely

visible with the highest powers of the microscope —

entered upon a totally new path. It became not only

possible but easy to obtain by instantaneous photography, a series of successive permanent pictures of a quickly changing scene at the rate of twenty or more in the second, showing what the eye is not quick enough to distinguish — namely, the detailed phases and succession of the movements which follow one another so rapidly as to elude our attempts to see more than their general result. In the special case studied, namely, the gallop¬ ing horse, a blurred eye-picture of moving parts, now here, now there, defying our efforts to disentangle the order and significance of their movement, was resolved by the series of instantaneous photographs into sharply cut definite shapes following one another with per¬ fect regularity and order and comprehensible as the successive phases of the continued movement thus analysed.

The “ problem of the galloping horse,” which had long engaged the attention of artists, sportsmen, and experimentalists, was thus solved by the American photographer, Muybridge. It had been maintained that in the “ gallop ” the horse never has all four feet off the ground : others held that the “ flying gallop,” with fore- and hind-limbs fully stretched and all the feet free from contact with the ground, as depicted in Herring’s well-known “ racing plates ” of last century, was a correct representation of one phase of the movement of the legs of the galloping horse. Large wagers were actually offered and taken as to the facts in dispute. I have discussed this matter at length elsewhere (“ Science from an Easy Chair,” Second Series, 1912), and will here merely recall the fact that by using carefully con¬ trived apparatus — consisting of a row of cameras placed at intervals along a running track, the shutters of which were opened and closed electrically by the passage of the horse in front of them — Muybridge succeeded in obtaining a series of accurately timed photographic pictures of the galloping horse, each taken by about i~40th of a second’s exposure and separated from its predecessor and from its successor by an equally short interval. The true series of movements made by the horse’s legs in the action, or “ gait,” known as “ the gallop,” were thus accurately recorded. It was shown that the legs never assume simultaneously the posi¬ tion represented in “ the flying gallop ” — nor any position resembling it — although all four legs do simultaneously leave the ground for the fraction of a second and are curiously flexed beneath the animal’s body.

And then came the moment in history when this photographic investigation of animal movement gave birth to the vast industry known as the “ cinemato¬ graph,” “ biograph,” or “ movies.” When lecturing in London and showing his series of instantaneous photo¬ graphs of the horse (and of other animals, including man), Muybridge (whom I often met at the time) was led to make the experiment (first tried at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street) of viewing his photo¬ graphs by the then well-known device called the “ Zoetrope,” or “ Wheel of Life.” The “ Zoetrope ” is a hollow cylinder a foot and a half in diameter, turning on a vertical axis rapidly and having its surface pierced with a number of vertical slots. Round the interior is arranged a paper band of pictures representing success¬ ive phases of a figure in movement, such as. a dancer or a juggler or a running animal. When the cylinder is rotated an observer looking through the slots sees the figure apparently in, motion. The figures were printed or painted in black “ silhouette ” on the paper bands supplied with the “ Zoetrope ” by dealers. Muybridge substituted for these hand-painted figures his series of instantaneous photographs of the galloping horse The detached, queer and awkward-looking, but faithful, instantanees gave, when looked at through the slot as the cylinder revolved at the appropriate rate, a single moving picture of the galloping horse, formed by the fusion in the observer’s visual apparatus of the rapidly passing photographs. It was easy to throw the pictures on the screen by a slight modification of the “ Zoetrope ” and the use of the electric lantern, and thus the first “ cinema show ” was created.

The subsequent development of the modern “ cinema ” was brought about by the invention of the celluloid roll-film, on which a series of many thousands of consecutive pictures are impressed by instantaneou photography, the sensitized film being moved across the focal plane and exposed intermittently. The film is developed and printed off in a permanent condition on similar celluloid films, which are then put through the exhibition camera for projection, with vast enlargement, on a distant screen. They are “ jerked ” through it with the same intermittence, and at the same rate as that at which the photographs were taken ; or, if desired, more quickly or more slowly.

Permanent Records. — The cinema appeals to the scientific investigator because it offers to him two distinct and widely separate new means of gaining knowledge. The first is that of obtaining records of the movements of all sorts of animate and inanimate things as they affect our vision — permanent pictures of “ the fleeting scene,” showing things actually moving and changing in shape and position as we see them with our eyes and as we could only, until the cinema came to our aid, recall or memorize by lengthy and necessarily in¬ adequate words or by series of hand-made drawings. Many “cinema” records which are of value to science have already been made, and many more are yet to be - made.

Among these are those of the dances and other movements of remote races of mankind, such as are practised by the natives of Central Australia, recorded in cinema films, and shown to us here in London by Sir Baldwin Spencer, F.R.S., a few years ago (1914). In Sir Baldwin’s exhibition, the realization of an ex¬ tremely remote and inaccessible phase of humanity, was greatly aided by the use of the phonograph, which gave to us the rhythmical chant or song of the “ black fellows,” taken simultaneously with the film pictures of their ceremonial dancing. A knowledge of the dances and ceremonials of primitive people is of very great importance to the science of anthropology, and unless such records are taken now we shall never get them : for the customs of primitive people die out and disappear even more rapidly than the people themselves. Again, in the same way the cinema can give us invaluable records of the habits and movements of wild animals destined soon to disappear and even now remote from us and difficult of access. To a very small extent such films have been taken, but there is need for more determined work of the kind, carried out systematically and thor¬ oughly, with scientific purpose and professional skill. Another wonderful series of movements which are but rarely open to our inspection are those of microscopic organisms. They can be filmed, and so “ recorded,” by the combination of microscope and cinema-camera. Those produced by Messrs. Pathe, of Paris, especially those of blood parasites, have a real value for science.

Slowing-down of Movement. — The other kind of service rendered by the cinema to science is in a way accidental or unintentional. The cinema show contains in fact “ more than meets the eye of man.” The desire to analyse the movements of the galloping horse led to the making of the moving pictures of the cinema show. And now the cinema films printed with thousands of instantaneous photographs in series — to be used merely to produce a moving picture — offer to the scientific in¬ quirer the analysis of the various movements seen in the picture in a most convenient form. Each instantaneous photograph on the film furnishes the observer with an instantaneous phase of this or that movement. The movements are, in fact, analysed into their constituent phases, lasting each but i~40th of a second or less. Although in practice these separate instantaneous pictures are so quickly passed through the projecting lantern as to be inseparable by the eye from one another, yet the film can be passed by jerks at longer intervals, or the film can be taken in the hand and each picture separately examined. Thus the ordinary walking and running of our fellow-citizens is shown to be built up of what are often very ugly instantaneous poses of the feet and legs, necessary results of our muscular and skeletal structure.

The expression of the emotions (on which Darwin wrote a book) is analysed in a surprising way by these con¬ stituent pictures of the film, and a field of valuable obser¬ vation on that important subject is thus opened to the psychologist, which has not yet been surveyed. Examples are seen in the facial changes in Muybridge’s series of the baseball batsman and in the series showing the face and movements of a naked bather suddenly drenched by a pailful of cold water.

The cinema shows have from time to time thrilled their spectators by the exhibition of films showing athletes boxing, jumping, running, and playing various games of ball, in which the passage of the film through the exhibition lantern is greatly “ slowed down,” but not enough to cause discontinuity of the moving figures. The “ slowing,” however, is such as to produce the most ludicrous appearance of hesitation and deliberate retarding of what is usually rapid instantaneous action. A boxer slowly and gently places his fist on the nose of his opponent, who quietly and ineffectually raises his arm in order gently to touch the intrusive fist. A high jumper is seen rising slowly in the air from the ground as though levitated by “ spirits ” or filled with gas, and then slowly, slowly, with astonishing contortions, he propels himself in a sitting position over the bar and quietly sinks, as though in a heavy liquid, to the ground once more. In the same way the deliberate, prolonged administration of a gentle push in the air to a tennis ball by a player who seems to be in a state of semi¬ somnolence is a wonderful and laughable result of slowing down the film of a first-class tennis match taken at a rapid rate. These slowed-down films — exhibited to the public for the sake of their grotesque sug¬ gestions — have great value as leading to the scientific analysis and understanding of complex movements, whether of limbs or of facial muscles, and render the separate, detached, instantaneous photographs readily intelligible. They also offer to the artist some very beautiful “ poses ” ofithe human body, as, for instance, in the slowed-down flight through the air of a “ high ” diver.

Movements of Legs and Wings. — Series of such instantanees must be made by the biologist expressly for his own inquiries, and every biological laboratory of university rank will soon have its own special appa¬ ratus (applicable to the microscope as well as to normal scenes) both for taking series of instantaneous pictures and for projecting them at whatever rate is desired on to a screen. A small apparatus of this kind suitable for use in an ordinary sitting-room or study is now on sale at a moderate price. I may give expression to personal conviction so far as to say that had such apparatus been available some thirty years ago, when I enjoyed the control of a laboratory and a staff of assistants and pupils at Oxford, I should certainly have had it installed there and have made researches by its aid. The movements of the legs and wings of all sorts of animals, large and small, besides those of the horse’s legs, must be investigated in this way. The question which so much disquieted the centipede when addressed to her by the toad, according to a poem cited on p. 242 — namely, “ Pray, which leg moves after which ? ” must be answered. And this not only as to centipedes, but as to the even more elusive millipedes and the fasci¬ nating marine worms called Nereis and Eunice and Nephthys and Phyllodoce, which have a row of more than a hundred paddle-like legs on each side of the body, moving rhythmically and propelling the worm through the water whilst its body gracefully undu¬ lates like that of a serpent. That “ rhythm ” must be ascertained and its control by the nervous centres of the “ annelid ” (a prettier name than “ worm ”) explained.

Movements of Cilia. — Then, too, to name only one other line of inquiry in which the cinema can, and will at once, help biology, there is the investigation (long waiting for further progress) of the movements of the vibratile hairs called “ cilia ” and “ flagella,” by use of which a whole population of microscopic Infusoria — of hundreds of different kinds — move with agility and dis¬ crimination and also often create whirlpools sweeping food into their mouths. The movements of cilia are so rapid that they have caused divergence of opinions as to their character as great as those as to the galloping legs of the horse. More complex and calling more urgently for instantaneous photographic records are the movements of the single long flagella of such animal¬ cules as Euglena, Astasia, and the so-called “ monads.” These “ flagella ” are sometimes, as in the spermatozoids of animals, worked as propulsive tails, like that of a tadpole, whilst another sort is carried as a straight stiff rod in front of the animalcule but has its free terminal portion bent back like the lash of a whip. This reflected lash wriggles in rhythmic undulation and so acts as a traction-pull and draws the animalcule forward. The exact movement of cilia and flagella and the action of various agencies in causing their variation could all be registered by series of instantaneous photographs taken by such a combination of the microscope and cinema camera as has enabled Dr. Commandant (who has pursued his excellent researches in the film factory of Messrs. Pathe, of Paris) to produce moving pictures of the minute bacteria and spirilla and of many animal¬ cules with great accuracy and clearness of detail. Such an application of “ cinema methods ” to the needs of science will soon be realized.

Quickening Up.— Having mentioned the “ slowing down ” of films as a source of interesting information, I am reminded of the contrasted method of quickening up a film which can give results of some value. For instance, such a very slow gradual process as the open¬ ing of a flower-bud or leaf-bud, taking, say, three or four days, can be photographed at intervals of several minutes and a film of some hundreds of instantaneous pictures thus obtained which is subsequently projected at the rate of a thousand or more in a minute. The resulting screen picture gives the untwisting of the flower from bud to perfect expansion in about half a minute. The whole process is visualized as one rapid move¬ ment, but not too rapid for the mind to form a vivid impression of the form and character of the movement.

The same thing has been shown in a much more difficult field of study — namely, that of the self-division and consequent multiplication of the constituent cells of protoplasm which build up animal tissues. This process is usually a very slow one. A cell, even in young tissue which is rapidly growing, takes some six hours or more to increase in bulk, and then to commence to split into two by the division of its nucleus or central kernel. It is so slow that it does not present itself to the observer’s mind as a movement at all. It is as difficult to “ see ” as is the movement of the hour-hand of a watch. Yet when a film is produced by photographing the dividing cell of living tissue at intervals of half a minute, and when the film so produced is unrolled at a much quicker rate, so as to pass through in half a minute what took six hours — then, indeed, we get a most astonishing spectacle. The quiet little corpuscles or “ cells ” of protoplasm suddenly become obviously “ alive.” They were “ alive ” all the time, but their slow movement failed to impress the observer. Now we see them in “ the quickened-up ” film — swelling and pushing one another,

2 6 and then suddenly bursting or splitting into two, where¬ upon each half swells and proceeds on the same path of growth and division.

The quickening-up process helps us to put things together, and to realize the active movement which is going on, though too slowly to be obvious to us when not thus accelerated. It would in this way help us to under¬ stand the separate pictures on a film of a lawn-tennis match, supposing we had only seen them very slowly pass through an exhibition camera. But as a means of investigation, “ quickening up ” is not nearly so im¬ portant as “ slowing down,” and the ultimate separation of the constituent pictures of a film. That is a process of real analysis and promises to render valuable help to scientific studies.

Records of Great Actors and Dancers. — Before leaving the subject, I should like to emphasize the value of the service to all sorts of interests, arts, in¬ dustries, and sciences, which the cinema can render when used purely and simply to register a record — a record, be it remembered, of a brief period of life and movement. This is altogether distinct from its use as a source of amusement, as a teller of stories and a peep-show of astonishing adventures, of horrors un¬ speakable, and of beauties beyond words. I confess that I do not get so much pleasure from the cinema in that sort of way as I do from the stage. But it seems to me that the cinema can fill a special place not possible for the living drama and stage play. It can actually reproduce by its carefully executed faithful records, the changing facial expression, and the gestures of great actors, of great public speakers, and of leaders of all kinds of enterprise. It provides scientifically accurate records of evanescent phenojnena. It has been little if at all used for this purpose, which appears to me to be its distinctive and -indeed unique possibility — far more important than that of “ story-telling without words.” A few films have been produced which possess this special value. Such, for instance, is one of the first films shown in London in which the story of the murder of the Due de Guise was “ featured,” as they say, by two great actors of the Comedie Frangaise, M. Mounier Sully and M. Le Bargy, aided by other notable actors and actresses. The value of this film (which I saw when it was first exhibited) consists — if it still exists — not in the dramatic story which it tells, but in the permanent record of the methods and mastery of facial expression characteristic of a group of famous comedians.

There is one great art of the stage in which the cinema could preserve for us a really complete and entirely satisfactory presentation of the performance of specially gifted artists, which can be perpetuated in no other way. That is the creative art of the great dancer. So far as I know this record has never been attempted. Some ten years ago Mr. John Sargent, the Academician, said to me that no painter could possibly present on canvas the charm and artistic gifts of the great Russian dancer Madame Anna Pavlova. It could, he said, only be achieved by the cinematograph. No doubt this is true. It could be done by the cinema, but it never has been. I do not know what are the circumstances which have hitherto prevented the production of the most skilfully arranged films faithfully recording the perform¬ ance of the greatest dancer of our time — films which would transmit to posterity with almost perfect accuracy the marvellous beauties of moving gesture and expression, which now are vouchsafed to us for a brief moment and remain thereafter only as fading memories. But some day the cinema will rescue the work of such great artists from oblivion and offer it for the permanent delight of the world.

Chapter III The Phagocytes, Or Eater-cells

ALL living things, whether plants or animals, are either single very minute “ corpuscles ” of proto¬ plasm — called “ cells ” — or are aggregates, i.e. built-up masses of such cells. Protoplasm is the name given to the very peculiar living, changing “ slime ” or viscid material of which every “ cell ” is constituted. The name “ cell ” was applied two hundred and fifty years ago to the tiny cases, fitted together like the cells of a honeycomb, which the living units, or cor¬ puscles, of protoplasm building up the leaves, stems, flowers, and fruits of plants deposit around themselves. Then the application of the word was actually transferred from the cell or case to its living, slimy content — just as we say “ a bottle of wine,” meaning the liquid contained in the glass bottle and not the glass bottle itself.

Not only is every living thing built up by these units of living matter called “ cells,” and of the cases of inert material deposited by them around themselves, which may be either very copious or else negligible in quantity, but the fact is that every living thing, whether plant or animal, starts its individual existence as a single “ ferti¬ lized egg-cell ” usually less than i-i5oth of an inch in diameter, which slowly increases in bulk and divides into two Each of these two divides into two, and these

ag repeat the process, and so on for hundreds of times, until from the single egg-cell — in the course of days or weeks — an adherent mass of many million “ cells ” may result. Such is the case with the larger animals and plants ; but there are simple kinds of both plants and animals which are single cells and remain so. They take nourishment, grow in size, and divide into two ; but the two, in this kind, separate from one another, and each goes on its own way. Such animals, of which many hundred kinds are known to microscopists, are called “ unicellular animals ” or “ Protozoa.” Each is com¬ parable to a single one of the many million units which build up a large animal such as a man or a fish or a snail. And, similarly, there are unicellular plants.

Living cells acquire many different shapes and are variously active. It is not surprising that some amongst those building up a complex, multicellular animal resemble very closely some of the independent uni¬ cellular animals. Whilst most of the cells of a multi¬ cellular animal are embedded in the case-like material which they form, and so constitute compact, more or less solid, living masses, which are called tissues, others float freely in the liquids of the animal body — the blood and the lymph — and are singularly like certain uni¬ cellular “ animalcules ” which are common in ponds and in sea-water, where they lead an independent life. These “ animalcules ” have long been known as Amoeba or the Proteus-animalcule, and the floating cells similar to Amoebae formed in the blood and lymph of multi¬ cellular animals by division of the original or parent “ egg-cell,” are called “ white blood corpuscles,” also “ amoeboid corpuscles,” or, since Metchnikoff dis¬ covered their nature and importance, the “ eater-cells,” or “ phagocytes.”

THE PHAGOCYTES

Let us look first at an Amoeba. In Fig. 5, one is shown removed from some pond-water and crawling on a glass slide. It is. magnified about 200 times in diameter. The figures are actual photographs taken from the first cinema-film of a moving shape-changing Amoeba ever produced, and were prepared and given to me by Messrs. Pathe, of Paris. The whole film

Fig. 5. — Figures from a cinema film of a rapidly moving Amoeba photographed from life by Messrs. Pathe, of Paris. The complete series consists of photographs taken at the rate of thirty in a second of time. The figures here selected are about a second of time apart.

could not be printed here, but I have selected seven, show¬ ing the changes of shape of the Amoeba at intervals of about |one second of time. This constant change of shape is indicated by the name Amoeba — which is a Greek word meaning “ changeful.” Owing to this irregular expansion and retraction of its naked slimy substance or “ protoplasm,” the Amoeba crawls. But not only that. If it comes into the neighbourhood of a particle of food (a diatom or tiny plant-particle more minute than itself) the slimy substance of the Amoeba is chemically attracted by it and flows around the food-particle and engulfs it, as shown in Fig. 6, A. And the particle (a) so engulfed or swallowed by the Amoeba

Fig. 6. — Comparison of an Amoeba (A) and a Colourless Blood Cor¬ puscle or Phagocyte (B). Each is in the act of engulfing a food-particle.

The food-particle a in the case of the amoeba is a minute green plant, and in the case of the phagocyte is a disease-germ of the kind known as a “ spirillum ” which produces “ relapsing fever.” The successive stages of the enclosure of the food-particle in the protoplasm or living substance of the amoeba and the phagocyte are seen, a, food-particle, b, water taken in with it by the amoeba, c, vacuole or cavity in the protoplasm containing liquid. d, the “ cell-nucleus ” or central kernel.

with a little water (b) is digested and dissolved in the Amoeba by chemical processes and absorbed by it as nourishment. The' Amoeba multiplies by division into two when it grows to a certain size, and it is often very abundant among dead leaves in a rain-pool. There are

THE PHAGOCYTES many kinds or species of Amoeba, of which that here figured is a sample.

A

Now we turn to the “ phagocytes,” the colourless corpuscles of the blood. They are parts or units of the actual substance of the multicellular animals in which they are abundant, and not parasites which have made their way in from the outside. Indeed, as we shall see, they are a sort of special guard or defence of the animal body against foreign intruders — such as Bacteria, Trypanosomes, and other “ germs ” which constantly make more or less effectual attempts to get into that little

Fig. 7. — Successive changes of form of a Colourless Corpuscle or " Phagocyte ” from the Blood of Man — as seen through a highpower microscope on a glass plate kept at the temperature of the human body. The phases are about five seconds of time apart.

fortress, a living animal. In Fig. 7 we have represented a “ phagocyte ” from the blood of man. It is much smaller than the Amoeba — twenty times smaller than the large one photographed — though Amcebse as small are common. The same movements and change of shape are seen as in Fig. 5. The “ phagocytes ” are very abundant in human blood — there are 500 millions of them in a pint of it, but the “ red corpuscles ” are far more numerous — in the proportion of 5000 to 1. In Fig. 8 a “ phagocyte ” from the frog’s blood is drawn from the life. It is larger and even more active than that of man.