You Cannot Get Away | My Web Site Page 220 Chapter 02 Page 04

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When a people once homogeneous are separated geographically in such a manner that thorough inter-communication is no longer preserved, all of the agencies by which languages change act separately in the distinct communities and produce different changes therein, and dialects are established. If the separation continues, such dialects become distinct languages in the sense that the people of one community are unable to understand the people of another. But such a development of languages is not differentiation in the sense in which this term is here used, and often used in biology, but is analogous to multiplication as understood in biology. The differentiation of an organ is its development for a special purpose, _i. e._, the organic, specialization is concomitant with functional specialization. When paws are differentiated into hands and feet, with the differentiation of the organs, there is a concomitant differentiation in the functions.

Many tropical trees possess thick, leathery leaves, as a protection against the force of the tropical raindrops. The _direct_ influence of the rain cannot be the cause of this power of resistance, for the leaves, while they were still thin, would simply have been torn to pieces. Their toughness must therefore be referred to selection, which would favour the trees with slightly thicker leaves, though we cannot calculate with any exactness how great the first stages of increase in thickness must have been. Our hypothesis receives further support from the fact that, in many such trees, the leaves are drawn out into a beak-like prolongation (Stahl and Haberlandt) which facilitates the rapid falling off of the rain water, and also from the fact that the leaves, while they are still young, hang limply down in bunches which offer the least possible resistance to the rain. Thus there are here three adaptations which can only be interpreted as due to selection. The initial stages of these adaptations must undoubtedly have had selection-value.

During these struggles between the two orders an event took place which is frequently referred to by later writers. In the year 440 B.C. there was a great famine at Rome. Sp. Maelius, one of the richest of the Plebeian knights, expended his fortune in buying up corn, which he sold to the poor at a small price, or distributed among them gratuitously. The Patricians thought, or pretended to think, that he was aiming at kingly power: and in the following year (439) the aged Quintius Cincinnatus, who had saved the Roman army on Mount Algidus, was appointed Dictator. He nominated C. Servilius Ahala his Master of the Horse. During the night the Capitol and all the strong posts were garrisoned by the Patricians, and in the morning Cincinnatus appeared in the forum with a strong force, and summoned Maelius to appear before his tribunal. But seeing the fate which awaited him, he refused to go, whereupon Ahala rushed into the crowd and struck him dead upon the spot. His property was confiscated, and his house was leveled to the ground. The deed of Ahala is frequently mentioned by Cicero and other writers in terms of the highest admiration, but it was regarded by the Plebeians at the time as an act of murder. Ahala was brought to trial, and only escaped condemnation by a voluntary exile.

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