The Evolution of the UselessAuthor(s): Edwin E. SlossonSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jan., 1924), pp. 105-107Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/7155 .

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THE PROGTRESS OF SCIENCE 105

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE By Dr. EDWIN E. SLOSSON

SCIENCE SERVICE, WASHINGTON

"WHAT iS the use of it?" was the question that THE EVOLUTION OF used to be asked by an investigator when he found

THE USELESS a strange structure or substance in a plant or animal.

He then set himself to finding out the use of it, and sometimes when he could not find out for sure what it was good for he invented a more or less plausible reason for its existence and peculiarities. It never occurred to him that the reason he had difficulty in getting an answer to this ques- tion might be that there was no answer to get. For if the investigator lived several generations back, in the age of the Bridgewater Treatises, he as- sumed that a living creature was constructed like a machine, where every part has a purpose. If he lived one generation back he assumed that all parts and peculiarities of plant or animal were developed from the 'ac- cumulation of minute favorable variations and, therefore, were, or at least had been, of value to the creature in his struggle for life. This was the theory of "pure Darwinism," but we must remember that Darwin himself was not a pure Darwinian, just as Karl Marx always refused to be classed as Marxian.

But the biologists of the present generation have given up the expecta- tion of finding a use for everything, for they do not now assume that every- thing is useful in the sense of being a benefit to the creature possessing it. The characteristic under consideration may be an accidental or inevitable accompaniment of its general development. It may be a mere by-product of its life process.

This modern point of view was expressed by A. G. Tansley, president of the Botanical section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at the recent Liverpool meeting, when he said:

An organism may produce parts which are useless or even harmful to it, provided that the whole is still able to carry on and reproduce itself in its actual conditions of life.

In regard to a multitude of characters there is not only no proof but not the smallest reason to suppose that they have now, or ever did have, any sur- vival value at all.

This view will relieve the zoologists and botanists of a lot of the bother they have had in trying to hatch up reasons for everything. Formerly when a plant was found to contain something poisonous or bad tasting, the bot- anist "explained" it by assuming that the noxious compound was put there or developed there because it kept the plant from being eaten. But the compound is formed by the chemical reactions of the plant's vital processes and it may or may not be a protection to it.

So, too, when the old-school entomologist found an insect that looked hideous-to human eyes-or that gave off an odor that was disagreeable -to human noses-he assumed that the bug appeared or smelled as hor- rible to the birds that prey on it as it did to him, and, therefore, its enemies avoided it. Perhaps that was so--and perhaps it wasn't. A skunk un- doubtedly makes use of its poison gas as a weapon of defense, and it cer-

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-Photograph by Julian P. scot-t DR. WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL

Recently installed as president of the UnTiiversity of California, since 1901 diirectoi of the Lick Observatory.

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 107

tainly is an offensive weapon. But many a poor bug may exude an odor quite as bad in proportion to his size and yet not get any benefit from it. Doubtless he has become so used to his odorous aura as to be quite uncon- scious of it, and often wonders why he is not more popular in society.

A scientist from Mars studying our earthly ant-hill would be quite puz- zled to understand why the automobiles shot out jets of ill-smelling smoke until the happy thought occurred to him that it was for the purpose of preventing pedestrians approaching too close and perhaps climbing on behind. He would wonder why heaps of shale were stacked up around our coal mines. But he would consider the question solved when he surmised that they could serve as ramparts in case the mine mouth were attacked by a mob of strikers.

Man may be "the measure of all things," as Protagoras said, but he is liable to mislead himself when he attempts to put his own meaning into nature.

THE TURKEY OR THE EAGLE

AMONG the problems which the founders of the re- public thought they had decided and disposed of, but which persist in bobbing up to perplex later generations, is the question of whether the turkey or thei eagAle ist more suTitable as a nationna Pm-

blem, and hence as the visible representation of a national ideal. The vote of 1782 for the eagle did not settle the matter, and Franklin's plea in favor of the turkey comes up for more careful consideration at Thanks- giving and Christmas time. This patriotic and practical statesman ob- jected to the adoption of the bald eagle as avian emblem of America on the grounds that:

lIe is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing-hawk, and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish and is bearing it to its nest the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from him. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little kingbird attacks him boldly. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem.

Ernest Ingersoll in his new book, "Birds in Legend, Fable and Folk- lore," says that a mistake was made by the designer of our national coat of arms in taking as his model the bald eagle for "none of these deprecia- tory things could Franklin have truly said of the skillful, self-supporting and handsome golden eagle-a Bird of Freedom indeed. Audubon named a western variety of it after General Washington. This species was re- garded with extreme veneration by the native red men of this country."

The eagle was finally adopted by Congress because they were assured by the heraldry expert consulted that the eagle was "truly imperial" and quite in accord with the escutcheons of the Old World.

This, however, was to Ben Franklin an argument against the eagle rather than for it, and he nominated the turkey as an opposition candidate on the grouinds that it was a native American bird, a useful and stately fowl, and not deficient in courage as is shown by the fact that it would not hesitate to attack any "Redcoat" that entered its barnyard.

Whether the turkey would be as readily aroused to the fighting pitch at the sight of modern British khaki or German feldgrau may be doubtful,

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