gg THE BIOCOSMOS PRELIMINARY- 



mula of De Vries, a kind of a runaway from 

 the garden of civilisation or perchance a floral 

 rebel, has the appearance of having wearied 

 of the transmitted order, of its inherited spe- 

 cies and of its narrow social bounds; then, 

 having somehow gotten the opportunity, it 

 makes a break for liberty and establishes a 

 new species which perpetuates itself and thus 

 gives a peculiar flowery immortality to its 

 founder who otherwise had died merely a 

 nameless individual. In like manner we still 

 hear of the founder of States Romulus, The- 

 seus and so on. Thus the work of the Dutch 

 botanist started a considerable ripple in biol- 

 ogy and science generally, and if we listen 

 closely, we may catch an echo of it in the in- 

 stitutional world of man. 



V. Already Earth-life has been mentioned 

 a number of times, and a general conception 

 of the significance lurking in this compound 

 word has been pre-supposed in the reader. 

 Some special remarks upon its meaning may 

 here be given, to be followed later with a view 

 of it in the total order of the Biocosmos. It 

 is correlated with Plant-life and Animal-life, 

 to which it is joined in the present work as 

 the third kind of Life, namely Earth-life. 

 Evidently it signifies the sum total of all ter- 

 restrial vitality, which, as -far as we know, is 

 the sum total of life as such in the universe. 



