SYMBIOSIS 21 



important from many points of view. Whilst pointing again 

 to the similarity between the phenomena of sex and those of 

 nutrition, it emphasises more particularly the importance I 

 have attached to " love-foods." The vegetable cell is capable 

 in the right season of manufacturing, of secreting and retain- 

 ing the proper kind of food-material for the animal, much the 

 same as the mammary gland is capable of doing in the proper 

 season for purposes of reproduction. "Every plant in the 

 world," as Henry Drummond says, "lives for others; it sets 

 aside something, something costly, cared for, the highest 

 expression of its nature. The seed is the tithe of love, the 

 tithe which nature renders to man." 



A particular significance attaches itself, therefore, to the 

 seasonable productions of the plant. We may conclude that, 

 like those of the human mother, they are particularly valuable 

 at those periods when both mammal and plant are most pre- 

 pared to give of themselves and in fullest measure in order 

 that the community may reap the benefit. The productive 

 powers of a plant, like those of a mother, cannot be expected to 

 be of the same efficiency at all times nor to be tolerant of 

 perpetual abuse. Again, we must conclude that the necessities 

 of the case require periods of recuperation on the part of the 

 benefactors and adequate restraint and reciprocal services on 

 the part of the benefitted, i.e., genuine symbiosis, i.e., 

 co-operation between complements. 



If the mammary gland is indeed foreshadowed in the 

 mutual altruistic arrangements of very primitive organisms, 

 its gradual perfection has, no doubt, been due to the same 

 reciprocal methods becoming increasingly perfected notwith- 

 standing physical separation. Our difficulty in realising this 

 truth is due to the fact that the originative factors occurred in 

 the dim past and are, therefore, too remote for our vision, and, 

 further, to the great complexity of the higher organisms and 

 our ignorance of the true causative factors of form-production, 

 and in particular of symbiogenesis. (Both C. roscoffensis and 

 C. paradoxa, by the way, are hermaphrodites.) 



