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maintenance of Symbiosis generally. Such checks are usual 

 with depredation. 



As is well known, man himself is liable to serious disease 

 as the result of Nematode infection. Seeing that infection is 

 in accordance with general principles, I am of opinion that 

 prevention should in its turn rely upon a general principle, 

 such as symbiotic integrity, implying that man should shape 

 his habits, and especially his feeding habits, so as to conform 

 as nearly as possible to plant-animal Symbiosis. Apart from 

 Symbiosis, and the incumbent duties and restraints, I do not 

 know of a single principle capable of providing the physiological 

 and psychological funds and the direction necessary for the 

 purposes of normal evolution. 



According to competent writers, most of the peculiar 

 features of man and of his kindred are derived from advantages 

 and adaptations gained during a period of arboreal life. This, 

 surely, was a period when the ape-like ancestors of man were 

 content to live mainly on the " kindly fruits of the earth." 

 The physiological and anatomical patrimony of the human race, 

 so far as this evidence goes, was securely founded upon a toler- 

 ably non-predaceous feeding basis — the usual requisite and 

 concomitant of Symbiosis, the alternative of parasitic nurture 

 and decline. I would also instance the case of the Vitamines, 

 which the plant alone knows how to manufacture, as indicating 

 that symbiotic organisms enjoy an immense advantage over 

 non-symbiotic in that they receive the most directly effective 

 pabulum for body and mind, which not only sustains but 

 positively directs evolution. I would point out, further, that 

 in our climate, for instance, the chances of survival are infinitely 

 better for those animals that rely upon the surplus stores of the 

 plants than those that seek their provender predaceously 

 among living organisms. In the winter time, as Mr. G. G. 

 Desmond has pointed out, insect fare being " off," the animals 

 that feed on insects are palpably worse off than those that feed 

 upon hard fruits and grain. The latter have made their winter 

 store, and may remain awake in its midst and active enough 

 to go out and about on fine days. 



Surely the chances of fruitful, social, and mental life are 

 therefore higher amongst cross-feeders than in-feeders. From 

 the storage of food supplies for the winter it is not a long step 

 to the formation of intellectual habits, which in their turn aid 

 the increase of facility in acquiring and reproducing new 

 knowledge. The cross-feeders, therefore, other things equal, 

 must excel in " plastic power of the brain." Their brain is 

 healthily occupied, and is fed in accordance with the require- 

 ments of wholesome and widely useful efficiency, whilst that 

 of carnivores is occupied with theft and murder, and fed in 



