250 CONTRIBUTIONS TO 
mony in compound words, where perhaps, at the most, only 
some unessential part of its signification suits. 
Thus E. Meyer, for example (Linnea, vol. vii, p. 454), after 
repeating the well-known experiments of Duhamel, lays down 
this position: “the law of the longitudinal growth of the 
internodes is to grow in a direction from above downwards.” 
He requires this position for his theory, and must consequently 
defend it in every way, although he himself confesses that this 
reversed growth must appear paradoxical to every one of his 
readers. He would never have arrived at this position if he 
had more accurately analysed the word “grow” (with which 
animal physiology had rendered him familiar), with reference 
to its applicability to the plant; he would soon have discovered 
that the generation of new cells, and so far the actual growth 
of the plant, constantly takes place in its outermost portions 
in an upward direction, and that his very simile of the building 
up a voltaic pile is exceedingly well adapted to refute himself. 
The experiments of Duhamel and Meyer would have no fur- 
ther result than to show that the inferior, that is, the earliest 
generated, older cells of the internode possess a greater capa- 
bility to extend in the longitudinal direction, and retain this 
power longer than the younger cells. 
We have an excellent illustration of the second point in the 
proposition so frequently expressed of late, that the stem of 
the plant is composed of the coalesced petioles. The word 
“coalesce” (verwachsen, to grow together) has possessed, how- 
ever, from time immemorial, both in ordinary life and in 
science, the signification that two or more originally and 
naturally separate parts have become by the process of growth 
either abnormally or, under certain circumstances, normally 
united. If therefore the word “coalesce” be applied to the 
stem of the plant, an organ, which, in every period of its ex- 
istence, under all forms of its appearance, is a simple and 
undivided one, and at the origm of the plant even constantly 
appears earlier than the leaves with their petioles, it certainly 
involves a mischievous abuse of language, by which science 
itself can gain nothing, and will even lose in the estimation 
of the intelligent non-professional man, who sees through such 
a play upon words. What would the zoologist say were we to 
regard the trunk as a coalescence of the extremities. 
