288 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



to be due to definite substances excreted by the egg, or by 

 accessory cells cut off from it some time before fusion of both 

 sex cells. But, no matter whether the excreted substance be 

 sugar as is probably true for mosses, or malic acid for ferns, 

 or cane sugar for flowers, or even other and varied products, 

 the attraction is due not to the molecules of these bodies as 

 l)hysical particles, nor to the molecules of the egg and sperm 

 as physical entities, but to definite discharges of chemic, elec- 

 tric, biotic, or other energies that traverse the particles, so as 

 to start and continue in these the attractive relation. 



But, when the sperm and the egg nuclei fuse, the extremely 

 complex highly energized molecules that make up both become 

 accurately distributed and minutely interpenetrated as organ- 

 ically balanced constituents, that start the egg on a definite 

 course of evolution, and so there results an organism that in 

 every cell may show the structural and physiological details 

 of both parents in blended relation, though reduced about 

 half in potential value. Now in the above sentence the words 

 "fuse," "distributed," "interpenetrated," "balanced," "start," 

 "results," "show," are all terms that denote energy. So the 

 writer claims that the minutest details of structure are all 

 expressive of accurate flows or "tubes of energy," that traverse 

 the molecular substance. 



The truth of the above was demonstrated by the writer 

 in his study of the hybrids of flowering plants. For the size, 

 shape, degree of thickening, protoplasmic activity, and char- 

 acter of the plastids, in different cells, furnished exact e\ddence 

 that profoundly delicate and yet powerful lines of energy flow 

 were constantly traversing the embry^onic cells and stimulating 

 these to behave in a manner that was an approximate or a 

 balanced mean between those of the parents. 



But abundant studies by many workers have revealed the 

 fact that reduction by half of the nuclear cliromatin, both in 

 egg and sperm, takes j^lace in Hepaticic and liigher plants in 

 the maturing spore cells, and that this halved, reduced, or hap- 

 loid state is continued till the eggs and sperms have been devel- 

 oped, matured, and attracted to each other. On fusion of 



