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Galleporto Bavicarius Directory 04
Page 06
They exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence in their habits, and, on the part of the mother, much affection for their young. The second female described was upon a tree when first discovered, with her mate and two young ones (a male and a female). Her first impulse was to descend with great rapidity and make off into the thicket with her mate and female offspring. The young male remaining behind, she soon returned to the rescue. She ascended and took him in her arms, at which moment she was shot, the ball passing through the forearm of the young one, on the way to the heart of the mother....
Attempts were made by the early colonists to grow other crops which, for various reasons, did not thrive at Jamestown. Some plants, like bananas, pineapple, citrus fruits, and pomegranates, could not withstand the cold Virginia winters. Other plants, including rice, cotton, indigo, sugarcane, flax, hemp, and olives, did not grow vigorously for one reason or another, and repeated efforts to cultivate them usually resulted in failure. Mulberry trees grew well at Jamestown (the leaves were used to feed silk worms), but attempts to make silk were not successful commercially.
On another tack, however, there probably evolved a series of simple predatory creatures, not able to build up organic matter from air, water, and salts, but devouring their neighbours. These units were not closed in with cellulose, but remained naked, with their living matter or protoplasm flowing out in changeful processes, such as we see in the Amoebae in the ditch or in our own white blood corpuscles and other amoeboid cells. These were the originators of the animal kingdom. Thus from very simple Protists the first animals and the first plants may have arisen. All were still very minute, and it is worth remembering that had there been any scientific spectator after our kind upon the earth during these long ages, he would have lamented the entire absence of life, although the seas were teeming. The simplest forms of life and the protoplasm which Huxley called the physical basis of life will be dealt with in the chapter on Biology in a later section of this work.
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