196 The Ohio Journal of Science [Vol. XXI, No. 6, 



and some in the neutral state; and that each state is quantita- 

 tive, exhibiting a greater or less degree of intensity. The sexual 

 state has no direct relation whatever to a segregation or associa- 

 tion of chromosomes with a possible homozygous or hetero- 

 zygous relation to hypothetical sex factors. Such an hypothesis 

 is not only impossible but to the writer it would appear as the 

 height of absurdity to even suggest it as an explanation of the 

 phenomena described. It is plain to any one familiar with 

 sexuality in the plant kingdom in general, that sexual states 

 usually arise during the vegetative growth of the cells or tissues, 

 that they must in most cases, at least, come from neutral states, 

 and that they are often easily reversible, the female to the male 

 or the male to the female. The phenomena of maleness, female- 

 ness, and neutrality of cells, tissues, organs, or entire individ- 

 uals do not come under the category of hereditary units or 

 factors in the ordinary sense and are certainly not Mendelian, 

 altho when their determination coincides with fertilization or 

 reduction they may have a superficial resemblance to normal 

 Mendelian phenomena. Sexuality will probably find its final 

 explanation in relation to the somewhat similar physical and 

 chemical phenomena, as electricity, magnetism, ionization, 

 electrons, and the like. 



It is remarkable that the opposite types of sexual states 

 may arise in small contiguous areas of a common vegetative 

 tissue; and that if the line of demarkation passes thru a 

 unit structure, like the flower of Arisaema triphyllum, the one 

 side should be staminate and the other side carpellate. The 

 very organs in which the factors become active for the expres- 

 sion of sexual characters may thus become tissue mosaics in 

 respect to these characters. Since maleness, femaleness, and 

 neutrality are states plainly reversible during vegetative 

 growth under different metabolic levels of the tissues or organs 

 of the individual, it becomes evident that sex can not only be 

 controlled but that it can be changed in any organism of inde- 

 terminate growth or in any part of an organism of determinate 

 growth which possesses tissues that reproduce or regenerate 

 themselves. It is even possible that cells which have completed 

 their ontogeny might be reversed in sexual state, altho such 

 reversal could probably only show itself functionally by the 

 production of certain chemical bodies and not morphologically. 



Columbus, Ohio, Dec. 6, 1920. 



