170 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



tions of plants and animals, in morphological comparisons of 

 races from the hereditary standpoint, in physiological responses 

 by allied individuals, the relative length, shape, size, and color 

 — very rarely the rapidity of response — are recorded when 

 such aj^peal to the eye. Hitherto, however, we have largely 

 overlooked the slight commencing bulging or thickening of 

 a cell wall, the redistribution of color from one set of cells to 

 another, the increasing strain-action placed on one cell or 

 group of cells through wind, rain, running water, snow, or 

 other organisms, and the reaction shown in modification of 

 length, or changed wall resistance of the cells thus acted on. 

 These and many related problems have yet to be studied and 

 minutely estimated. 



Now in connection T\ath the question already raised (p. 150) 

 as to whether certain supposed "characters" appear that seem 

 to have been absent in related species or genera, but which 

 are an evident heritage of plant or animal tissues lower dowTi 

 and liigher in the scale of life, we already have amply sufficient 

 evidence to show that some such cases undoubtedly are, and 

 probably all are, merely due to a temporary cessation in chem- 

 ico-metabolic activity of, or energy distribution to, a constituent 

 of the protoplasm, either through distribution elsewhere of 

 the appropriate food materials needed for their formation, 

 or through absence or changed cooperation of the environal 

 stimuli, that would have called forth — if acting — the tem- 

 porarily suppressed "character." When the proper flows and 

 proper combinations of ' energy are again reestablished, the 

 living substance, or some chemical constituents of it, so acts 

 as to cause reappearance of the temporarily suppressed "char- 

 acter." The instances of this are now so overwhelmingly 

 abundant and exact that to deny such is to refuse the evidence 

 of immediate chemical demonstration. 



All changes, all alterations, in the organic as in the inorganic 

 kingdom are due to the changed conditions, kinds, and relations 

 of energy that place or remove, that build up or break downi, 

 variously energized molecules, which themselves are energy- 

 charged ether particles. Relative distribution and relative 



