EVOLUTION 937 



ratio between anabolism and katabolism, measured for a repre- 

 sentative length of time. 



We may bring this into line with the theory of our Evolution 

 of Sex (1889), that the sex-divergence depends on the rate and rhythm 

 of the metabolic routine, the female or egg-producer being an 



organism in which the ratio of anabolism to katabolism f :^ J is 



greater than the corresponding ratio in the male. (See section on 

 Sex.) It would make for unity of outlook if we could regard the 

 contrast between Plant and Animal, Sporozoon and Infusorian, 

 Coral and Jellyfish, Sea-slug and Sea-butterfly, Amphibian and 

 Fish, Mammal and Bird, as analogous to the contrast between 

 Female and Male: and indeed that has from the outset been in our 

 minds. See also our Sex and om: Evolution (Home University Series). 



Delaying once more, and deliberately again, we see throughout 

 the flowering plants, alike in orders, families, genera, and species, 

 the dichotomy between the more vegetative and the more floral, 

 between the grasses and the orchids, both literally and metaphori- 

 cally, between the "weeds" and the "flowers" as the insight of 

 common folk discerns. The grass type with inconspicuous flowers is 

 pre-eminently foliar, covering the earth like a garment; the orchid 

 type is pre-eminently floral, with relatively insignificant vegetation, 

 sometimes indeed dependent to no small degree on its mycorhiza 

 (q.v.). We are not of course suggesting any direct or recent dichotomy 

 between Gramineae and Orchidaceae, since they are well known to 

 be through a long past on different lines of evolution, e.g. with 

 superior and inferior ovary respectively; we are suggesting some- 

 thing deeper, that the divergence towards grassy and towards floral 

 types expresses a variational alternative of a fundamental character, 

 analogous to that between coral and medusa, between typical 

 reptile and typical bird, even between female and male. So grass 

 and orchid are for us at extremes of an early dichotomy among their 

 monocotyledonous ancestors; while the also now very dissimilar 

 rushes and lilies started upon their dichotomy, now so well marked, 

 from a common type, from which they are still in principle compara- 

 tively little removed. 



And if it be said that everyone has always known that there have 

 been and are emphatically more active and emphatically more 

 sluggish animals, pronouncedly more foliar and pronouncedly more 

 floral plants, we must reply that this commonplace has not been 

 biologically appreciated as indicative of fundamental variational 

 alternatives, and that the prevailing analogy in the manifold 

 expressions of the dichotomy has not been recognised. Open secrets 

 are often missed. 



But we are not suggesting that evolutionary divergences are all 

 simply dependent on the see-saw between preponderant anabolism 



