634 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



the Conferracese. The wagon or the cycle forms each a genus, 

 the latter of which we might name Cyclus. It includes the 

 old primitive four-wheeled type or Cyclus telrarota, the newer 

 C. trirota, then the bicycle or C. dirofa of which several marked 

 varieties as the high-wheeled and the low equal-wheeled as 

 well as others might be given. Still more recently the auto- 

 cycle appeared as C. autorota. 



With all of these however, as with plants and animals, '*fos- 

 sil" forms often exist in museums, that in ordinary life are 

 now extinct. Thus the old Irish cariole amongst horse con- 

 veyances and the high bicycle that might be termed Cyclus 

 dirota var. inequalirota are alike relics of past decades or cen- 

 turies. Later in this chapter we shall consider how far such 

 phenomena in human progress may or may not be paralleled 

 in the origin of organic forms; that is, whether or not funda- 

 mentally similar laws have been in operation that may govern 

 both. 



Before leaving instruments like the above, the fact deserves 

 to be emphasized, even though known to all, that the most 

 important improvements and modifications in all of them have 

 mainly been with the aim of securing a more perfect storage 

 and utilization of energy, in relation to the work that each 

 has to accomplish, as well as the greatest capacity to set free 

 most quickly the greatest and most perfect kind of energy 

 available. Such also has been the principle running through- 

 out the entire plan of organic evolution. For in man the 

 degree of energy-concentration and expenditure needed to 

 perform a certain mental or cogitic act greatly excels that 

 needed by a lower animal in performing one that involves 

 less mentality, or that rises only to the cognitic stage of ener- 

 gizing complexity. 



The writer may next be permitted to refer to and describe 

 the proenvironal act that first suggested to him the possible 

 value and far-reaching nature of the law of proenvironment. 

 At the University of Pennsylvania he was permitted to plan 

 out and to develop a University Botanic Garden that would 

 cover an area of fully four acres. The space to be changed 



