These, then, are the general principles involved in, and illustrated by, the configuration of an egg; and they take us as far as we can safely go without actual quantitative determinations, in each particular case, of the forces concerned.
In certain cases among the invertebrates, we again find instances of hard-shelled eggs which have obviously been moulded by the oviduct, or so-called “ootype,” in which they have lain: and not merely in such a way as to shew the effects of peristaltic pressure upon a uniform elastic envelope, but so as to impress upon the egg the more or less irregular form of the cavity, within which it had been for a time contained and compressed. After this fashion Dr Looss[599] of Cairo has {661} explained the curious form of the egg in Bilharzia (Schistosoma) haematobium, a formidable parasitic worm to which is due a disease wide-spread in Africa and Arabia, and an especial scourge of the Mecca pilgrims. The egg in this worm is provided at one end with a little spine, which now and then is found to be placed not terminally but laterally or ventrally, and which when so placed has been looked upon as the mark of a supposed new species, S. Mansoni. As Looss has now shewn, the little spine must be explained as having been moulded within a little funnel-shaped expansion of the uterus, just where it communicates with the common duct leading from the ovary and yolk-gland; by the accumulation of eggs in the ootype, the one last formed is crowded into a sideways position, and then, where the side-wall of the egg bulges in the funnel-shaped orifice of the duct, a little lateral “spine” is formed. In another species, S. japonicum, the egg is described as bulging into a so-called “calotte,” or bubble-like convexity at the end opposite to the spine. This, I think, may, with very little doubt, be ascribed to hardening of the egg-shell having taken place just at the period when partial relief from pressure was being experienced by the egg in the neighbourhood of the dilated orifice of the oviduct.
This case of Bilharzia is not, from our present point of view, a very important one, but nevertheless it is interesting. It ascribes to a mechanical cause a curious peculiarity of form; it shews, by reference to this mechanical principle, that two conditions which were very different to the systematic naturalist’s eye, were really only two simple mechanical modifications of the same thing; and it destroys the chief evidence for the existence of a supposed new species of worm, a continued belief in which, among worms of such great pathogenic importance, might lead to gravely erroneous pathological deductions.
On the Form of Sea-urchins
As a corollary to the problem of the bird’s egg, we may consider for a moment the forms assumed by the shells of the sea-urchins. These latter are commonly divided into two classes, the Regular and the Irregular Echinids. The regular sea-urchins, save in {662} slight details which do not affect our problem, have a complete radial symmetry. The axis of the animal’s body is vertical, with mouth below and the intestinal outlet above; and around this axis the shell is built as a symmetrical system. It follows that in horizontal section the shell is everywhere circular, and we shall have only to consider its form as seen in vertical section or projection. The irregular urchins (very inaccurately so-called) have the anal extremity of the body removed from its central, dorsal situation; and it follows that they have now a single plane of symmetry, about which the organism, shell and all, is bilaterally symmetrical. We need not concern ourselves in detail with the shapes of their shells, which may be very simply interpreted, by the help of radial co-ordinates, as deformations of the circular or “regular” type.
The sea-urchin shell consists of a membrane, stiffened into rigidity by calcareous deposits, which constitute a beautiful skeleton of separate, neatly fitting “ossicles.” The rigidity of the shell is more apparent than real, for the entire structure is, in a sluggish way, plastic; inasmuch as each little ossicle is capable of growth, and the entire shell grows by increments to each and all of these multitudinous elements, whose individual growth involves a certain amount of freedom to move relatively to one another; in a few cases the ossicles are so little developed that the whole shell appears soft and flexible. The viscera of the animal occupy but a small part of the space within the shell, the cavity being mainly filled by a large quantity of watery fluid, whose density must be very near to that of the external sea-water.
Apart from the fact that the sea-urchin continues to grow, it is plain that we have here the same general conditions as in the egg-shell, and that the form of the sea-urchin is subject to a similar equilibrium of forces. But there is this important difference, that an external muscular pressure (such as the oviduct administers during the consolidation of egg-shell), is now lacking. In its place we have the steady continuous influence of gravity, and there is yet another force which in all probability we require to take into consideration.
While the sea-urchin is alive, an immense number of delicate “tube-feet,” with suckers at their tips, pass through minute pores {663} in the shell, and, like so many long cables, moor the animal to the ground. They constitute a symmetrical system of forces, with one resultant downwards, in the direction of gravity, and another outwards in a radial direction; and if we look upon the shell as originally spherical, both will tend to depress the sphere into a flattened cake. We need not consider the radial component, but may treat the case as that of a spherical shell symmetrically depressed under the influence of gravity. This is precisely the condition which we have to deal with in a drop of liquid lying on a plate; the form of which is determined by its own uniform surface-tension, plus gravity, acting against the uniform internal hydrostatic pressure. Simple as this system is, the full mathematical investigation of the form of a drop is not easy, and we can scarcely hope that the systematic study of the Echinodermata will ever be conducted by methods based on Laplace’s differential equation[600]; but we have no difficulty in seeing that the various forms represented in a series of sea-urchin shells are no other than those which we may easily and perfectly imitate in drops.
In the case of the drop of water (or of any other particular liquid) the specific surface-tension is always constant, and the pressure varies inversely as the radius of curvature; therefore the smaller the drop the more nearly is it able to conserve the spherical form, and the larger the drop the more does it become flattened under gravity. We can represent the phenomenon by using india-rubber balls filled with water, of different sizes; the little ones will remain very nearly spherical, but the larger will fall down “of their own weight,” into the form of more and more flattened cakes; and we see the same thing when we let drops of heavy oil (such as the orthotoluidene spoken of on p. [219]), fall through a tall column of water, the little ones remaining round, and the big ones getting more and more flattened as they sink. In the case of the sea-urchin, the same series of forms may be assumed to occur, irrespective of size, through variations in T, the specific tension, or “strength,” of the enveloping shell. Accordingly we may study, entirely from this point of view, such a series as the following (Fig. [328]). In a very few cases, such as the fossil Palaeechinus, we have an approximately spherical {664} shell, that is to say a shell so strong that the influence of gravity becomes negligible as a cause of deformation. The ordinary species of Echinus begin to display a pronounced depression, and this reaches its maximum in such soft-shelled flexible forms as Phormosoma. On the general question I took the opportunity of consulting Mr C. R. Darling, who is an acknowledged expert in drops, and he at once agreed with me that such forms as are represented in Fig. [328] are no other than diagrammatic illustrations