108 SYMBIOGENESIS 



characters are concerned, though it lead to an output of fruit 

 increased in bulk and in numbers and even in some qualities, 

 yet deleteriously affects the true and permanent interests of the 

 tree, because it is apt to carry the exhaustion of the inherited 

 racial capital (symbiotics) too far. This one-sided arrange- 

 ment has arisen from greediness of man. The scion lives 

 almost as an epiphyte on the stock. It obtains essential nutri- 

 tion without effort, and can thus continue diverting its main 

 energies in the direction of abnormal, i.e., surfeited repro- 

 duction. The process is equivalent to a partial restoration of 

 symbiotics. 



The scion obtains enhanced facilities of nutrition which are 

 not altogether for its good, though in view of the otherwise 

 undoubted adequacy and compatibility of this particular nutri- 

 tion, the scion is bound to obtain, at any rate for a time, some 

 rejuvenation from it. The scion obtains what we might, in 

 common parlance, describe as "new blood," although in 

 reality it is " old blood," i.e., congenial blood. The adequacy 

 of the new strains of "blood" which the scion receives from 

 the stock depends, of course, on the fact of common descent, a 

 wild stock being chosen whose ratio of growth is fairly com- 

 patible with that of the scion. That the scion does not lose its 

 characteristics, but just sufficiently retains them not to become 

 completely merged in or blended with those of the stock, is not 

 so astonishing when we remember that in "grafting" we 

 generally choose precisely those compatibilities and precisely 

 those methods which obviate such an event. 



All that we wish to contrive is somewhat to replenish the 

 exhaustion of the more dependent (over-nurtured) variety 

 in which we have a special gastronomic interest by 

 drawing on the virgin vitality of the independent variety. The 

 ensuing exploitation of the latter seems to us a matter of 

 indifference so long as nature provides an ample supply of 

 " eternal givers." " Be sure they sleep not whom God needs." 

 There is, however, a pretty general feeling among horti- 

 culturists that plants suffer from long-continued asexual 



