Word: kamongo
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Died. Homer William Smith, 67, lanky, leading U.S. physiologist who was first to trace the evolution of the kidney, for 34 years taught New York University medical students to reflect on the arts as well as the sciences, and as a passionate agnostic sought to prove in his books Kamongo and Man and His Gods that organized religion is a figment of man's fearful myths; of a cerebral hemorrhage; in Manhattan...
...Kamongo" Mr. Smith takes us on a scientific adventure into the great universe and from there into the world of the unknown. It is semi-fictional in form. Two men on a ship in the sweltering heat of the tropics get into conversation. One is a young scientist returning to Africa to continue his exploration, the other an Anglican missionary going back to his jungle parish. As often happens they talk about their careers; and the scientist, a bit embarrassed at talking so much, tells of his search for Kamongo, the lung fish, who, when the dry season domes along...
...from its lungs was the ability to live through periods of drought. Encysted in sun-baked mud it could live on air and its own tissues for months, even for years. From the papyrus roots of Lake Victoria Joel two years prior had collected specimens of the fish, called Kamongo by the blacks. Now he is taking more of them, packed in mud, back to America, to study further how their kidneys and other organs stand such a record-breaking strain...
...evolutionary futility of the gradually disappearing lungfish looks to the Anglican priest like a crack in the Divine Plan. Joel does his best to widen the crack by comparing Man's brain to Kamongo's lung, both ingenious developments, neither leading anywhere much. Joel likens life to whirlpools in a stream of energy, likens the living matter of cells and bodies to inorganic rubbish whirlpool-caught. The gyroscopic adjustment of the whirlpool to obstacles in its course gives an illusion of intelligent purpose to the rubbish it holds together. Really, all the purpose animating the rubbish is to spin...
...leave him unconvinced. When the anchor-chain grates overboard at Port Said, Joel finds the out-argued priest sticking to his divine guns still. Joel cannot figure him out. Also he sweats less than Joel, does not seem to mind the stewing heat. He is a queer fish too. Kamongo is one of the two April choices of The Book-of-the-Month Club...
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