56. One other matter we have to note before we have given the full answer to the question why we move.

We have seen that we move by reason of our muscles contracting, and that in a general way a muscle contracts because a something started in the brain by our will passes down from the brain through more or less of the spinal cord, along certain nerves till it reaches the muscle. It is this something, which we may call a nervous impulse, which causes the muscle to contract.

But what leads us to exercise our wills? What starts the nervous impulse?

All the nerves in the body do not end in muscles. Many of them end, for instance, in the skin, in those papillÆ of which I spoke a little while ago. These nerves cannot be used for carrying nervous impulses from the brain to the skin. By an effort of the will you can make your muscles contract; but try as much as you can, you cannot produce any change in your skin.

What purpose do these nerves serve, then? If you prick or touch your finger, you feel the prick or touch; you say you have sensation in your finger. Suppose you were to cut across the nerves which lead from the skin of your finger along your arm up to your brain. What would happen? If you pricked or touched your finger, you would not feel either prick or touch. You would say you had lost all sensation in your finger. These nerves ending in the finger then, have a different use from those ending in the muscle. The latter carry impulses from the brain to the muscle, and so, being instruments for causing movements, are called motor nerves. The former, carrying impulses from the skin to the brain, and being instruments for bringing about sensations, are called sensory nerves. All parts of the skin are provided with these sensory nerves, but not to the same extent. The parts where they abound, as the fingers, are said to be very sensitive; the parts where they are scanty, as the back of the trunk, are said to be less sensitive. Other parts besides the skin have also sensory nerves.

Motor nerves are of one kind only; they all have one kind of work to do—to make a muscle contract. But there are several kinds of sensory nerves, each kind having a special work to do. The several works which these different kinds of sensory nerves have to do are called the senses.

The work of the nerves of the skin, all over the body, is called the sense of touch. By touch you can learn whether a body is rough or smooth, wet or dry, hot or cold, and so on.

You cannot, however, by touch distinguish between salt and sugar. Yet directly you place either salt or sugar on your tongue you can recognize it, because you then employ sensory nerves of another kind, the nerves which give us the sense of taste. So also we have nerves of smell, nerves of hearing, and nerves of sight.

The nerves of touch, where they end, or rather where they begin in the skin, sometimes have and sometimes have not, little peculiar structures attached to them, little organs of touch. So also the nerves of taste, and smell, end or rather begin in a peculiar way. When we come to the nerves of hearing and of seeing, we find these beginning in most elaborate and complicated organs, the ear and the eye.

Of all these organs of the senses you will learn more hereafter; meanwhile, I want you to understand that by means of these various sensory nerves, we are, so long as we are alive and awake, receiving impressions from the external world, sensations of touch, sensations of roughness and smoothness, of heat and cold, sensations of good and bad odours, sensations of tastes of various kinds, sensations of all manner of sounds, sensations of the colours and forms of things.

By our skin, by our nose, by our tongue and palate, by our ears, and above all by our eyes, impressions caused by the external world are for ever travelling up sensory nerves to the brain; thither come also impressions from within ourselves, telling us where our limbs are and what our muscles are doing. Within the brain these impressions become sensations. They stir the brain to action; and the brain, working on them and by them, through ways we know not of, governs the body as a conscious intelligent will.

NICHOLSON’S GEOLOGY.
Text-Book of Geology, for Schools and Colleges.
By H. Alleyne Nicholson, M. D., D. Sc., M. A., Ph. D.,
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In this volume much more space has been devoted, comparatively speaking, to the Invertebrate Animals, than has usually been the case in works of this nature: upon the belief that all teachings of Zoology should, where possible, be accompanied by practical work, while the young student is much more likely to busy himself practically with shells, insects, corals, and the like, than with the larger and less attainable Vertebrate Animals.

Considerable space has been devoted to the discussion of the principles of Zoological classification, and the body of the work is prefaced by a synoptical view of the chief divisions of the animal kingdom.

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FOOTNOTES: