celebrity, says La Nature. She passed her whole life in the cradle where she slept her first sleep, twenty-eight years ago. Up to the day of her death, this strange creature preserved the height and general appearance of an infant of a few months; but, wonderful to say, her intellect was normally developed and nothing could have been odder than to hear this tiny baby in the cradle talk like an adult, with much vivacity and intelligence! Maria was born in 1875, at Brigittenan, near Vienna. Her parents were of normal development, and so were her brothers and sisters. (Text.)
(718)
DEGENERACY
Before Lord Shaftesbury began his work among the poor of England, he tells us that he witnessed this occurrence:
I must have been fourteen years old, or
a little more, and I was walking down from
the churchyard, just as we are to-day, when
I was startled by hearing a sudden yell, a
drunken voice singing, and a noisy sound of
laughter coming up from the main road below;
then they turned the corner, and I saw
four men staggering along under a coffin,
and jesting with song and horrible laughter
as they drew near me. I looked at the
coffin. I could see the rough boards were
hastily nailed together; great cracks half
revealed what was inside. Just as they
passed me one of the men slipt, and the
coffin fell from their shoulders and rolled
over into the road. It was horrifying to
me; and then they began to swear at one
another, using foul language. I thought they
would have fought over the poor dead creature's
corpse. I came away feeling that if
God preserved my life I would do something
to help the poor and him that had no friend.
(719)
Perhaps too much attention is being paid to various theories concerning evolution and development. It might be well sometimes to devote at least a little consideration to the serious possibilities of devolution and degeneracy.
Dr. Carpenter, a London zoologist, speaks
thus of certain organisms brought to light
by the scientific Atlantic dredging expedition:
"This little organism is clearly a
dwarfed and deformed representative of the
highly developed Apiocrinus of the Bradford
clay, which, as my friend Wyville
Thomson said, seems to have been going to
the bad for millions of years." Thus we
learn that a lowly creature living on the
ocean floor is the degenerate result of that
which has been going to the bad for millions
of years.
But if such a vast course of degradation
is possible in a sea-worm, what are
the possibilities of degradation in a
soul?
(720)
See Degradation; Early Promise; Selfishness.
Degeneracy a Figment—See Science
Shattering Superstitions.
DEGENERACY THROUGH DISUSE
It is a recognized fact that the disuse of faculties inevitably leads to deterioration.
There is a curious little plant called the
sundew which grows in marshes. A small
fly alights on one of the leaves attracted by
the crimson hairs, and by the sticky liquid
called the "dew." When the fly struggles
to get free the hairs slowly curve round
him and trap him, at the same time pouring
out more of the dew. Presently the poor insect
dies in that trap. Why does the plant
do this? Simply because it wants to eat the
fly. The dew is acid and dissolves the insect's
body, so that the plant can absorb the
nitrogen which it contains. The sundew
once lived in harmless plant fashion, for it
belongs to the saxifrage family, of which
the other members are quite respectable and
hard-working plants, getting their living by
honest root-work in extracting their nitrogen
out of the ground. When we examine
the sundew we find it has scarcely anything
worthy the name of a root. Long ago it
seemed to dislike the wear and tear of
thrusting rootlets into the ground and seeking
for food, so it settled into a bog, where
it could get water at least without any trouble.
There, as the roots had next to nothing
to do, they slowly dwindled away, as all
things will dwindle which are not used,
whether they be plant-roots, or the limbs of
animals, or the minds of men.—"A Mountain
Path."
(721)
DEGRADATION
A doctor was once riding from Yezd to
Kerman, in Persia, to make a visit. Arriving
at a post-house, and finding no horse,
