SYMBIOSIS 39 



informs me. There is also the case of the inflorescence of 

 plants which requires frequently, as a pre-requisite, the 

 diminution of the supply of mineral salts. It is 

 almost as though, as L'Estrange already declared: "A 

 squeamish fastidious niceness, in meats and drinks, must 

 be cured by starving." Medical men, indeed, begin 

 to see that at least an occasional meat fast is for various 

 reasons an excellent thing. We may say that it has the effect 

 of assisting towards a re-establishment of a tolerable degree of 

 domestic symbiosis both for ordinary physiological as well 

 as for genetic purposes in those cases where domestic 

 symbiosis is in danger of becoming perverted by the particular 

 organism's transgressions against the laws of biological 

 symbiosis. The organism under these circumstances can rely 

 for genetic purposes on racial capital (accumulated without 

 depredation) rather than on the dishonest " gains " due to the 

 change of habit from strenuousness to depredation. In 

 the case of a typical in-feeder, the King Salmon 

 (Oncorhynchus), the misere physiologique has become so great 

 that the animal does not eat in fresh water at all and exhibits 

 degeneration of the food canal. " The intestine and the 

 stomach shrivel up and the mucous membrane degenerates." 

 The reproductive nemesis is such that the fish die after spawn- 

 ing generally before they reach the fourth or fifth year. 

 " There is no return to the sea as in the case of our salmon." 

 At the same time all such organisms seem an easy prey to 

 numbers of parasites in short, they exhibit all the symptoms 

 of an intense " parasitic diathesis." Cases of indulgence, of 

 course, are frequently connected with the rhythmical change 

 of the seasons, but it is only a certain number of organisms 

 that go to excess and run the risk of degeneration in a favour- 

 able season. Others remain unsurfeited and strenuous; nor do 

 they exhibit any need for a drastic change of fare prior to 

 reproduction. 



Before starting on our digression concerning the nature 

 of plants, we saw that in the case of both plants and of 



