138 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



protoplasm, as the first requirement. A chemical explanation 

 will not suffice, a physico-chemical — and that of high work 

 transformability capacity — is needed to explain the case. 

 When we bear in mind further that all of the above-named 

 plants have been demonstrated to possess intercellular proto- 

 plasmic continuity — and possibly most plants have such — 

 this enormously complicates the question from the purely 

 chemical standpoint. But such the more claims from us the 

 acceptance of a physico-chemical explanation, in which definite 

 lines of energy-flow, or lines of force, constitute the ruling 

 and directive factor. 



The existence of a high quality of chromatin or cognitic 

 energy, associated hereditarily with definite lines of force, 

 as affected by and responsive to external stimuli, would also 

 explain many hitherto obscure cases of irritable stimuli and 

 growth reaction. Thus, while the main stem or occasionally 

 also some sideshoots of plants are usually upright, others are 

 oblique or even transverse — rarely as in Yucca filamentosa 

 directed vertically downward. If in this case we consider that 

 a certain number of geoenergids have become hereditarily 

 massed in, and are physically repulsive to, a definite number 

 of photo- or helioenergids, in the branch cells, such would start 

 exact protoplasmic aggregations and growth actions in the cell- 

 walls, that would explain the resulting naked-eye conditions. 



Again such striking cases as those cited by my former student. 

 Dr. Schively, for Amphicarpcea (65: 270), and as have been 

 described also for the coltsfoot (Tussilago Farfara) and the 

 ivy-leaved toadflax (Linaria Cymbalaria), where growth 

 reversals occur, would equally represent changed lines of force. 

 The case of Amphicarpcea, the common hog peanut, is worth 

 quoting. This leguminous plant forms delicate branches in 

 the axils of the lowermost foliage leaves. These have been 

 demonstrated — alike by observation and reversing experiment 

 — to be positively geotropic, and so as compared with ordinary 

 branches may be considered to have an excess of geoenergids 

 massed in their cells. But if, while these branches are still 

 an inch or two in length, the main axis be cut off, the hitherto 



