Bailey] ^4 piay ], 



into those higher ranges of being in which sensation and volition have 

 developed, and in which the effects of use and disuse and of psychologi- 

 cal states have become increasingly more important as factors of ascent. 

 The whole moot question, then, as to whether variations are definite or 

 multifarious, is aside from the issue. They* are as definite as the changes 

 in the environment, which determine and control their existence. More 

 differences arise than can persist, but this does not prove that those which 

 are lost are any the less due to the impinging stimuli. Those who write 

 of definite variation, usually construe the result or outcome of some par- 

 ticular evolution into a measure of the variation which is conceived to 

 have taken place in the group. Most or all of the present characters of 

 any group are definite because they are the survivals in a process of elimi- 

 nation ; but there may have been, at various times, the most diverse and 

 diffuse variations in the very group which is now marked by definite 

 attributes. As the lines of ascent developed, and generation followed 

 generation in countless number, the organization was more and more im- 

 pressed with the features of ancestral characters, and these ancestral 

 characters are the more persistent as they have been more constant in the 

 past. But these characters, which appear as hereditary or atavistic varia- 

 tions in succeeding generations, were no doubt first, at least in the plant 

 creation, the offspring, for the most part, of the environment reacting 

 upon the organism. As life has ascended in the time-scale and has become 

 increasingly complex, so the operation of any incident force must ever 

 produce more diverse and unpredictable results. What I mean to say is 

 that, in plants, some of the variations seem to me to be the resultants of 

 a long line of previous incident impressions, or have no immediate inci- 

 ting cause. Such variation is, to all appearances, fortuitous. It is, there- 

 fore, evident that the study of the effects of impinging environments at 

 the present day may not directly elucidate the changes which similar con- 

 ditions may have produced in the beginning. 



Whilst the steadily ascending line of the plant creation was fitting 

 itself into the changing moods of the external world, it was at the same 

 time developing an internal power. Plants were constantly growing 

 larger and stronger or more specialized. The accumulation of vital energy 

 is an acquired character the same as peculiarities of form or structure 

 are. It is the accumulated result of every circumstance which has con- 

 tributed to the well-being and virility of the organism. The gardener 

 knows that he can cause the plant to store up energy in the seed, so that 

 the resulting crop will be the larger. Growth is itself but the expression 

 or result of this energy which has been picked up by the way through 

 countless ages. Now, mere growth is variation. It results in differences. 

 Plants cannot grow without being unlike. The more luxuriant the 

 growth, the more marked the variation. Most plants have acquired or 

 inherited more growth-force than they are able to use because they are 

 held down to certain limitations by the conditions in which they are neces- 

 sarily placed by the struggle for existence. I am convinced that many of 



