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Zaproburno Yollanica Directory 11
Page 06
In sea-urchins we often find two creatures superficially indistinguishable, but the one is a female with large ovaries and the other is a male with equally large testes. Here the physiological difference does not affect the body as a whole, but the reproductive organs or gonads only, though more intimate physiology would doubtless discover differences in the blood or in the chemical routine (metabolism). In a large number of cases, however, there are marked superficial differences between the sexes, and everyone is familiar with such contrasts as peacock and peahen, stag and hind. In such cases the physiological difference between the sperm-producer and the ovum-producer, for this is the essential difference, saturates through the body and expresses itself in masculine and feminine structures and modes of behaviour. The expression of the masculine and feminine characters is in some cases under the control of hormones or chemical messengers which are carried by the blood from the reproductive organs throughout the body, and pull the trigger which brings about the development of an antler or a wattle or a decorative plume or a capacity for vocal and saltatory display. In some cases it is certain that the female carries in a latent state the masculine features, but these are kept from expressing themselves by other chemical messengers from the ovary. Of these chemical messengers more must be said later on.
My men had an idea that the great river we were looking for must be in that plain. For a few hours they seemed to have regained their courage. We heard some piercing shrieks, and we at once proceeded in their direction, as we knew they came from monkeys. In fact we found an enormously high tree, some 5 ft. in diameter. Up on its summit some beautiful yellow fruit stared us in the face. Four tiny monkeys were busy eating the fruit. Benedicto, who had by that time become very religious, joined his hands and offered prayers to the Virgin that the monkeys might drop some fruit down, but they went on eating while we gazed at them from below. We tried to fire at them with the Mauser, but again not a single cartridge went off. Eventually the monkeys dropped down the empty shells of the fruit they had eaten. With our ravenous appetite we rushed for them and with our teeth scraped off the few grains of sweet substance which remained attached to the inside of the shells. We waited and waited under that tree for a long time, Filippe now joining also in the prayers. Each time a shell dropped our palates rejoiced for a few moments at the infinitesimal taste we got from the discarded shells. It was out of the question to climb up such a big tree or to cut it down, as we had no strength left.
The truth is that the man of letters forgets that this is exactly the same thought as that which haunts the busy man after, let us say, a day of looking over examination-papers or attending committees. The busy man, if he reflects at all, is only too apt to say to himself, "Here have I been slaving away like a stonebreaker, reading endless scripts, discussing an infinity of petty details, and what on earth is the use of it all?" Yet Sir Alfred Lyall once said that if a man had once taken a hand in big public affairs, he thought of literature much as a man who had crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-yacht might think of sculling a boat upon the Thames. One of the things that moved Dr. Johnson to a tempest of wrath was when on the death of Lord Lichfield, the Lord Chancellor, Boswell said to him that if he had taken to the law as a profession, he might have been Lord Chancellor, and with the same title. Johnson was extremely angry, and said that it was unfriendly to remind a man of such things when it was too late.
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