SYMBIOSIS AND THE BIOLOGY 



OF FOOD 



By H. REINHEIMER 



In the Origin Darwin states his view that the productions of 

 nature are far " truer " in character than man's productions, 

 that they are infinitely better adapted to the most complex 

 conditions of life, and that they plainly bear the stamp of far 

 higher workmanship. 



This being the case, and time per se on Darwin's own 

 admission, not being capable of effecting anything at all, why 

 then base, as he did, the theory of evolution on domestication 

 rather than upon the study of the long-protracted gestation 

 processes of nature — to use an expression of Robert Chambers's 

 — in which processes, according to my view. Symbiosis has 

 played the leading part ? Ought we not to pause and to con- 

 sider in detail the methods of nature's workmanship, the 

 principles which guide it and which differentiate it from those 

 governing domestication, before we conclude that any and every 

 change is good enough to illustrate nature's sublime method of 

 evolution ? Over and over again Darwin emphasises (particu- 

 larly in Variations) that domesticated races of animals and 

 cultivated races of plants often exhibit an abnormal character, 

 as compared with natural species, because " they have been 

 modified, not for their own benefit, but for that of man," and 

 he concedes, further, that the higher variability of domestic 

 productions may perhaps in part be due to excess of food — 

 that is, strictly speaking, a pathological cause. 



That " fatty degeneration " and precocity are only too 

 frequently induced by domestication is, of course, well known. 

 Recent research has confirmed the view that the usual methods 

 of domestication are pregnant with unwholesome results upon 

 the constitution of the organism, that they retard or inhibit its 

 progressive evolution, and it has also brought to light the fact 

 that they are often fraught with undesirable reactions upon man. 



In the Journal of Economic Biology, June 191 5, Mr. G. 

 Massee pointed out that the leading idea in dealing with 

 cultivated plants is to intensify or to develop to an abnormal 

 extent either the flowering, fruiting, or some desirable quality, 



258 



