156 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



age in which it was published — an age in which there was 

 time for leisurely rambles afield — has given way to an age 

 of automobiles, telephones, air ships, wireless and other means 

 of annihilating time and distance. The world now moves 

 too rapidly for the "Class-Book", l)ut looking through the 

 yellowing leaves of our own copy we are disposed to think 

 tliat something precious was lost when it ceased to represent 

 the attitude of the student toward the plant world. 



BOOKS AND WRITERS 



In recent years a number of facts have accumulated 

 which indicates that protoplasm — that stuff of which living 

 tissue is made — may itself have its youth, maturity and old 

 age. It is well known, that seedling peonies and pyrethrums 

 may produce single flowers at first and only become double 

 with age. Fresh seeds of cucurbits commonly produce plants 

 with a great amount of leaf and stem, but the same seeds 

 allowed to age before planting will produce a much greater 

 number of fruits. Plants tranferred to our gardens from 

 the wild are often difficult to raise from seeds but when they 

 are once grown in that way, further crops of plants from 

 seeds are more easily obtained. A plant which roots with 

 difficulty from cuttings takes readily to this method of 

 propagation after a succession of cuttings has been estalilished. 

 The evidence from the animal side is fully as striking. Al- 

 though llic scientists are inclined to scout the inhcrittance 

 of acf|uired characteristics, there arc many reasons to believe 

 that they are wrong. Certainly modern forms exhibit char- 

 acters that their remote ancestors did not possess. If these 

 characters were not accjuired at some stage in the history of 

 the family line and since inherited, it is incumbent upon 



