154 SYMBIOGENESIS 



Sodom might have been obviated had, at least, peradventure 

 "ten righteous men " been found there. But there was found 

 only one who had retained the desire and the friendship of the 

 good, and lest he should be swamped by or destroyed with the 

 evil and be doomed in the great crisis that was to supervene 

 lest the breeding of nothing but evil should continue he had 

 to be segregated. 



Thus Scriptural and Platonic Biology are, in reality, quite 

 at one with modern Biology. 



We can also see that no Mendelian character can ever 

 behave as though it existed by or for itself only. It is possible 

 and it is of the utmost interest to be well established that 

 the integration of every progressive feature deserving of the 

 name is by an interplay of opposites (allelomorphs) ; but we 

 must not lose sight of the fact that in nature it is symbio- 

 genesis, in the widest sense of the word, that is aimed at. 



Eventually, however, in the case of the diseased wheat, 

 on self -fertilisation "recessive" immune seedlings appear in 

 the ratio of 1:3 to "dominant" "rusty" seedlings; i.e., as I 

 would interpret it, previous conditions of health re-assert them- 

 selves concurrently with a costly extrusion of impure (though 

 " dominant " !) strains. Generic recovery is purchased by the 

 wheat at the price of " extruding " three-quarters of a genera- 

 tion as "rusty" elements. It is a kind of "self-pruning." 

 An organism that is to be of some bio-economic use can afford 

 to harbour only a limited amount of encumbrance for any 

 length of time. 



That cultivated plants do not really present instances of 

 genuine immunity is borne out by the fact that Heterodera, a 

 noted Nematode, is capable of working immense havoc amongst 

 them, particularly where the soil is damp, whilst its presence 

 has actually been found to be advantageous to plants that 

 grow wild (in deserts), which, not being surfeited, have been 

 able to maintain a high degree of resistance to disease pari 

 passu with the capacity for wholesome biological symbiosis. 

 The case shows that "immunity" is a relative concept, and 



