BIO-DYNAMICS 117 



the path of work, serviceableness, and reciprocity that pro- 

 vides the proper stimulations for the progressive evolution of 

 life. 



The opposite method, as exemplified artificially by the 

 cutting or scion, and in nature by epiphytes, scavengers, 

 carnivores, and parasites, is a one-sided method depending on 

 mutual plunder, on exhaustive stimulation, on abuse of power 

 by exploitation. It represents the path "that leadeth to 

 (biological) destruction." 



Another passage of Mr. Pickering's valuable paper is 

 wqrth quoting here as bearing on the important subject of 

 " love-foods," their derivation and mode of production and on 

 their symbiogenetic significance. 



When a grain of pollen, either of the same or another flower, enters 

 the central tube or pistil, fertilisation occurs, and a seed or pip begins 

 to form near the base of the pistil. As it develops, the woody substance 

 surrounding it, which is really a portion of the stalk of the tree, 

 gradually swells to a remarkable extent and eventually forms the fleshy 

 or edible portion of the fruit. We commonly call it the fruit, but it 

 is only a metamorphosed portion of the mother tree : the real fruit 

 of the tree, the progeny of male and female elements, is the pip. 



The tree is ready to give of itself particularly so after 

 having (symbiotically) received the stimulus of fertilisation 

 i.e., to elaborate an exchange product for export against 

 service. 



This stimulus is particularly valuable if it is one of cross- 

 fertilisation, as Darwin has demonstrated by his classical 

 experiments. It is here where I consider Darwin greatest and 

 most worth following up, whilst, strangely, many of his 

 followers who swear by the master's words on debatable points 

 think him most open to criticism. Darwin declared: 



Yet if a little pollen were carried, at first occasionally and then 

 habitually, by the pollen -devouring insects from flower to flower, and a 

 cross thus effected, although nine-tenths of the pollen were destroyed it 

 might still be a great gain to the plant to be thus robbed. 



That the stimulus in cross-fertilisation is very frequently 

 and very reliably conveyed by animal agency is well known, 



