These valuable discoveries were augmented by Schleiden and Schwann, showing that all organisms are built up of living cells. The offices performed within cells by colloids and solutions, and in the nerves by electric movements, were traced.
Investigations into the most minute forms of animal life also furnished startling results. Schwann found, in 1838, that fermenting yeast consists of living vegetable cells, and that organic putrefaction is caused by the activities of such cells. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) demonstrated that the presence of bacteria in any animal is always due to the entrance of bacteria and microbes from the outside, or by means favoring the abnormal increase of existing germs. He also showed by experiments that diseases like chicken cholera, phylloxera, or the silkworm disease are caused by particular microbes. These discoveries led to the tracing of many common diseases to their special living germs.
While these impressive additions to scientific knowledge were being made, other naturalists were studying the instinctive emotional and intelligent behavior and psychology of animals, both singly and in herds. Animals and insects were found to display signs of intelligence, sometimes of a high order; to live socially, in many cases; and to play and court with emotional attributes. Throughout the animal kingdom, until man is reached, animals are guided in their activities by self and racial preservation.
Play was found to be a fruitful factor in animal education, even in minute insects. The behavior of any animal does not stand alone, but is related to that of others. Animals which hunt, or are hunted, combatants, rivals, mates, and enemies, react upon one another.
Entomology, the science of insects, has been extensively systematized. Practically every phenomenon relating to the insect metamorphosis has been disclosed. The works of Binet, Lubbock, Fabre, and many others have illuminated the psychology of insect life. The charming writings of J. H. Fabre on the life of a fly, on the mason bees, the hunting wasps, the life of a caterpillar, of a grasshopper, of the sacred beetles and other insects, are as thrilling and instructive as any masterpiece of romantic writing. What could be more interesting than Fabre's account of his observations on the glowworm, when he discovered that its luminescence is due to oxidation by air forces through a special lightning tube, and that it occurs in males as well as females and in the eggs and grubs likewise? He shows that the glowworm's life, from start to finish, is one carnival of light. The females are living lighthouses which brilliantly illumine the wild thyme and other flowering plants they haunt on dark nights, making miniature fairylands in country districts.
Studies in the growth and form of living bodies have opened up many interesting problems in physical biology. The cell and tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower are various portions of matter, the particles of which are moved, molded, conformed, or shaped in obedience to the laws of physics. Forms like those of the lovely wing scales of butterflies, of lace flies, or the spiral shells of the foraminifera are natural diagrams of the results of physical forces. Biologists not only study the nature of the motions of living organisms as animal kinetics, but also the conformation of the organism itself, whose permanence or equilibrium is explained by the interaction or balance of forces leading to static conditions.
The dynamics of cell formation and cell division and their karyokinetic figure drawings are the result of numerous complex physical force struggles brought about by chemical and physiological reactions. Studies of these have shown that the spermatozoön, nucleus, chromosomes, or the germ plasms, which develop organic life, can never act alone. They must be started by other forces which make them seats of energy.
The experiments of George Rainey on the elementary formation of the skeletons of small animals, of Carpenter upon the formation of shells, and those of Professor Harting on the same subjects, have shown how lime solutions acting in conjunction with gelatinous substances, or membranes, build up the numerous geometric shapes of the frames of so many kinds of primitive organisms, and the scales of fish or the extraordinarily beautiful markings and sculpture of shells.
The application of the Cartesian coordinates to the outline of organisms, skulls, bones, and organs of animals has opened up a new field of mathematics—biological research which has yielded many results confirming theories based on other data and supplying facts of great interest that may at any time result in the establishment of important generalizations.
The fact of beauty in animate nature is so pronounced, and man's contemplative delight in beautiful things is so natural that investigations have been made into the æsthetic emotions of other animals. A vast array of facts has been collected which leaves no doubt of the universal appreciation of beauty. The lovely colors of shells, butterflies and birds, the extraordinary beauty of the designs of the frames of the Foraminifera, radiolarians and sponges, the graceful logarithmic spirals of horns and flower and leaf buds, and the charming flowing lines in the shape of the race horse and gazelle, these elements of organic beauty which emphasize and enhance the forms of animals, all contribute to the general embellishment of nature. The combinations of beauty of form, color, and movements in parrots, humming birds, the fish inhabiting coral reefs, butterflies, and orchids, are always perfect. We likewise find that in all parts of the globe, and in each life zone, organic beauty conforms to that of the landscape and the heavens. The biological significance of this universality of beauty in the organic world will be dealt with in the following chapter.