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 (Linnsea, 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 j)rocess 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 origin 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. 



