162 SYMB10GENESIS 



were made were three modified inflorescence cuttings, the parent- 

 plants of which certainly exhibited no striking abnormalities. In a 

 short time many hitherto latent potentialities became apparent so that 

 characters, never previously observed or at least very rarely, were 

 exhibited, such as scattered leaf-arrangement, torsion, terminal or 

 branched inflorescences, the conversion of the inflorescence into foliage 

 shoots, every conceivable alteration in the colour of flowers, the assump- 

 tion of a green colour by parts of the flower, the proliferation of flowers. 



Prof. Klebs goes on to say that : 



All this points to some disturbance in the specie* resulting from the 

 method of cultivation. It has, however, not yet been possible to produce 

 constant races with any one of these modified characters. 



If many plants, in spite of wide distribution in nature, 

 vary very little, this is, I maintain, because of their steady 

 function, i.e., because of their wide bio-economic usefulness 

 and connected constancy of (good) character. So long as they 

 remain tolerably within the bond of bio-economic co-operation, 

 so long as they maintain a tolerable bio-economic specialisa- 

 tion they remain, ipso facto, "good" and "constant." 



If, in the alternative event, they are showing a multi- 

 plicity of puzzling new " characters," this is not surprising 

 in view of the wealth of physiological capital accumulated 

 during the periods of strenuousness. It is not surprising that 

 the wealth of symbiotics can be diverted into many different 

 channels and used for a plurality of new combinations, 

 although or perhaps all the more readily because the con- 

 stitution of organisms is " atomic," and segregations and 

 re-combinations depend on the absence or presence of certain 

 "factors." We have already seen that the advent of surfeit 

 and of "protection" must produce a general relaxation of 

 strenuousness and a loss of the powers of work. " Eine 

 iiberreichliche Nahrung gebiert wunderliche Laster," as 

 Nietzsche has it. Surfeit also produces puzzling transforma- 

 tions. In a similar fashion mercantile wealth when no longer 

 employed in a particular trade may be, and often is, turned to 

 a plurality of uses some productive and others less so, some to 

 endow learning, science and art, others to make further 



