238 SYMBWGENESIS 



sexual amphimixis. In short, we may repeat that when the 

 normal biological relations become distorted, much that was 

 previously wholesome may be, and often is, turned into poison. 

 The law of conflict becomes the alternative of the law of 

 symbiosis. 



Let us remember the extraordinary symbiotic value of so 

 mild a plant secretion as honey in the evolution of the 

 hymenoptera, and through them upon evolution in general. 

 Let us remember that felonious ways of obtaining the honey 

 react damagingly upon the bees and bring other undesirable 

 correlations in their train. Seeing how much depends on the 

 proper constitution and balance of protein and other complex 

 and indispensable substances for the manufacture of which the 

 plant alone possesses the secret, it stands to reason that any 

 conduct on the part of an animal calculated seriously to inter- 

 fere with the plant's general welfare and productiveness may 

 easily and almost automatically tend to interfere with and to 

 distort the beneficial composition of the plant's products. 

 From the manufacture of a wholesome proteid to the produc- 

 tion of a poisonous alkaloid, therefore, may not be a long step. 



If a green tobacco plant is inoculated with various organic 

 compounds, the proportion of its nicotine output may be 

 doubled, which shows that anything that tends to lower the 

 efficiency of the photosynthetic output of a green plant tends 

 to render the plant more negative in symbiogenetic value 

 generally, i.e., in this case more poisonous. It is known that 

 several families of plants produce free prussic acid. They are 

 called Cyanogenetic plants, and animals rarely touch these 

 plants. Knowledge (Sept., 1914) reports that according to 

 Jorissen (Bull. Acad. Roy. Belg., 1913), the most recent 

 investigator of this subject, this acid (prussic) results not only 

 from the process of carbon assimilation, but also from the 

 action of Nitrogen compounds upon substances as vanillin and 

 citric acid. " For instance, if a mixture of citric acid with a 

 much smaller amount of potassium nitrite and a trace of 

 bicarbonate of iron be exposed to light in a glass vessel for a 



