BIONOMICS 211 



notoriously very deficient. "By their works shall ye know 

 them." 



Again, the fact noted by Spencer that the seed of a plant 

 contains nitrogenous substance in a far higher ratio than the 

 rest of the plant belongs to a different order of facts from that 

 of the nitrogenous composition of the Fungi. If, as Prof. 

 J. B. Farmer says, vegetation has assumed much of its present 

 form in relation to "overwhelmingly important functions," 

 this is true in particular of symbiogenetic functions, and such 

 broad consideration is calculated to throw light on the signifi- 

 cance of nitrogen accumulation in seeds quite as much as on 

 that of reproduction generally. The example of the plant 

 shows that it is reproduction and the associated or subsequent 

 demand of special physical expenditure (need of active respira- 

 tion and of supplying the energy and heat required by the 

 slender stalk to bore through the soil, or maybe the hard snow 

 crust) together with the vicarious purpose, i.e., adequate 

 symbiogenetic maturation of "love-foods," which requires 

 a temporary extra accumulation of nitrogen in the parts con- 

 cerned, in order, we may thus say, to facilitate a special and 

 vital symbiotic effort. We may reasonably assume that the 

 normal nitrogen requirement of a plant is in keeping with its 

 work, i.e., its symbiogenetic function, and that it is only the 

 abnormally exaggerated and morbid sex-hunger of a saprophyte 

 or parasite which makes for undue requirements of nitrogenous 

 food in order to finance, as it were, with borrowed capital the 

 ever-increasing deficit of such degenerate species in the house- 

 hold of Xature borrowings of the kind which sooner or later 

 will bring on overwhelming sorrowings. 



We may further conclude, and this is in harmony with 

 observed facts, that as regards animals a more liberal nitro- 

 genous fare is indicated where special and concentrated 

 physical efforts are required, and that where this is not the 

 case, every unused surplus of nitrogenous food must become the 

 cause of morbidity, and give rise to digestive transformations 

 of an undesirable kind. The "fatty degeneration" noted by 



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