SOME ANALOGIES AND HOMOLOGIES. 95 



of the old block by exhibiting some mannerism or peculiarity of 

 the father. Apparently the male points are as easily inherited as 

 the female points, and most certainly when the male tendencies 

 are most evident, then the female tendencies are more or less in 

 abeyance, and vice versa, and these variabilities may of course 

 occur at any period of the being's existence, often, alas! when 

 least desired. It has been disputed whether the female points of 

 a plant are not more readily inherited than the male. A few 

 years ago it was stated that the chances were as much as three to 

 one in favor of the female side. Messrs. Sutton's foreman has 

 experimented on these lines, particularly with Avild potatoes and 

 a cross with gloxinias. He seems convinced that the hereditary 

 traits of the male are shown as often and as decisively as those 

 of the female. But he is also convinced that, while the staminal 

 tendencies are to the fore, the pistillate tendencies are more or less 

 in abeyance. For a considerable period of the plant's growth he 

 has noted nothing but the male tendencies ; suddenly the whole 

 bearings of the plant have changed, the staminal tendencies have 

 absolutely died off, and a plant with all the traits of its mother 

 rapidly shows up in its place. 



The reasons why a plant should always be called a plant, and 

 an animal an animal, are not always very apparent. An animal 

 is a conscious being. I mean that it knows how to discriminate 

 between this and that, reasons about what is good for it, rejects 

 what experience has informed it is not good for it, and has special 

 sences. It is a conscious being indeed reasons, discriminates. 

 Here is a great gulf between the animal and the plant ! Most of 

 us are ready to acknowledge such simple truths, and we are all 

 wrong, for the differences when sifted are only those of a greater 

 and lesser degree. Some plants like shade, some like light. Why ? 

 Well, why do we under some circumstances prefer dark, and 

 under others light ? Wheii we are healthy we can digest meat, 

 and reject, with good reason, a meal of sticks and stones. A 

 carnivorous plant receives and digests a proportionate meat meal, 

 but feed it with pebbles and bits of stick, and it refuses to receive 

 such dainties. We bend beneath a blow, we protect ourselves 

 from further injuries that we judge may follow so do the sensi- 

 tive plants. With tht aid of a specialist in this class of work I 

 am trying to demonstrate the presence of nervous tissue in plants. 

 So far, we have not been successful, but the circumstantial evi- 

 dence is so strong that we may feel quite certain that better 

 methods of demonstration will give ocular evidence of what 

 we seek. The proofs of the struggle for existence in both animal 

 and plant life have been prettily told by Taylor. 



The part that color and get-up plays in the propagation of 

 species is precisely analogous, alike in the doings of man, the 



