The Creature Is Weighed And
Measured; Its Appearance Is Described; Then It Is Carefully Taken To
Pieces And Its Structure
And internal organisation are minutely detailed;
next there is an account of its functions, and an explanation of how the
Phosphorescent appearance is produced; and finally its mode of life,
nutrition, and system of generation are dealt with. Peron collects a
number of specimens, places them in a vessel filled with sea-water, and
observes how, at rhythmic intervals, the creature alternately contracts
and dilates in a fashion analogous to the art of breathing among more
highly organised animals; and he notices that the phosphorescence appears
and disappears with these movements, being most fully displayed when the
creature's body is most contracted, and disappearing during the moments
of most complete expansion. Here we have careful examination and
observation, study of the organism in its native habitat, anatomical
dissection, and experiment - a piece of biological work exceedingly well
done. Cuvier would have read the piece with satisfaction in his pupil.
Other Memoires by Peron, on the temperature of the sea on the surface and
at measured depths; on the zoology of the Austral regions; on dysentery
in hot countries and the medicinal use of the betel-nut; on sea animals,
such as seals; and on the art of maintaining live animals in zoological
collections, were valuable; and the subjects on which he wrote are
mentioned as indicating the range of his scientific interests. One of his
pieces of work which, naturally, aroused much interest in Europe, was an
extremely curious investigation relative to the physiological
peculiarities of females of the Bushman tribes in South Africa, where
Peron made an inland journey for the purpose.* (* There is a technical
note on this delicate subject in Girard's F. Peron, Naturaliste, Voyageur
aux Terres Australes (Paris, 1857); a book which also gives a good
summary of Peron's scientific work.)
When he died, Peron had not had time to apply himself adequately to the
enormous mass of material that he had collected. His fertile and curious
mind, we cannot doubt, would have enriched the scientific literature of
France with many other monographs. The deaths at sea of Bernier and
Deleuze also deprived the records of the expedition of contributions
which they would have made on their special lines of research.
Collections of specimens and piles of memoranda, uninformed by the
intelligence of those to whom their meaning is most apparent, are a
barren result.
Peron's biological work was done in accordance with the spirit and
principles of Cuvier, who stood at the head of European savants in his
own field. "Trained for four years in Cuvier's school," wrote the
naturalist, "I had for guide not only his method and his principles, but
manuscript instructions that he had had the goodness to write for me on
my departure from Europe." Cuvier insisted on the importance of structure
and function; "to name well you must know well." The part played by the
creature in its own share of the world, its nervous organisation, its
life as involved in its form, were essentials upon which he laid stress
in his teaching; and he imparted to those who came under his influence a
breadth of view, a feeling for the unity of nature, that is quite modern,
and has governed all the greatest of his successors. "Not only is each
being an organism, the whole universe is one, but many million times more
complicated; and that which the anatomist does for a single animal - for
the microcosm - the naturalist is to do for the macrocosm, for the
universal animal, for the play of this immense aggregation of partial
organisms." Detailed research, coupled with an outlook on the whole realm
of nature - that was the essential principle of Cuvier's science; and it
is because we can recognise in Peron a man who had profitably sat at the
feet of the great master, that his death before he had applied his zeal
to the material collected with so much labour is the more deeply to be
regretted.
The few paragraphs in which Peron expressed his views regarding the
modification of species may be quoted. It has to be remembered that they
were written in the early years of the nineteenth century, when ideas on
this subject were in a state of uncertainty rather than of transition,
and more than half a century before Darwin gave an entirely new direction
to thought by publishing his great hypothesis. Cuvier at this time
believed in the fixity of species - constancy in the type with
modification in the form of individuals; but his opinions underwent some
amount of change in the latter part of his career. The point argued with
such gravity, and the conclusion which Peron stresses with the
impressiveness of italics, are not such as a naturalist nowadays would
think it worth while to elaborate, namely, that organisms having a
general structural similarity are modified by climate and environment. It
would not require a voyage to another hemisphere to convince a schoolboy
of that truth nowadays. But the paragraphs have a certain historical
value, for they put what was evidently an important idea to an
accomplished naturalist a century ago. They present us, in that aspect,
with an interesting bit of pre-Darwinian generalisation.
"Before natural history had acquired a strict and appropriate language of
its own," wrote Peron,* (* Voyage de Decouvertes, 1824 edition 3 243.)
"when its methods were defective and incomplete, travellers and
naturalists confused under one name, in imitation of each other, so to
speak, animals which were essentially different. There is no class of the
animal kingdom which, in the actual state of things, does not include
several orbicular species; that is to say, several species which are in
some degree common to all parts of the globe, however they may be
modified by geographical and climatic conditions. Other species, although
confined to certain latitudes, are, however, usually regarded as common
to all climates, and to all seas comprised within these latitudes.
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