196 THE BIOCOSMOS -PARTICULARIZED. 



ceptions, such as the epiphyte with its roots 

 dangling in the air. Certain animals, con- 

 versely, are fixed to one place and appear to 

 vegetate (the sponges). Still the typical 

 plant has this primal character of being direct- 

 ly rooted in the Earth, whose three main ele- 

 ments (land, water, air) are its immediate 

 sustenance. Thus it is truly the elemental 

 Life-form, feeding on the Inorganic directly, 

 and transmuting the same into the Organic, 

 even if some Plants (like the Dionaea) may 

 be supposed to have a relish for animal food. 

 The Plant is a living organism, with a com- 

 mon center, yet this center is not specialized 

 inside the organism, but lies more on the out- 

 side, in the Earth. The result is that the 

 Plant is not self-anchored but fixed in the 

 soil, and that each organ, even if working 

 for a common end, may act quite independ- 

 ently, and one can often be made to take the 

 place of another. Thus the vegetal organism 

 is not a profoundly associated system of mu- 

 tually interrelated organs, but rather a 

 league (to employ an institutional parallel) 

 of more or less independent members, each 

 of which may perform under certain condi- 

 tions the total process. So the leaf or bud 

 or shoot may show itself by growth the entire 

 Plant. We cannot wholly deny to the organs 

 of the Plant a certain interdependence, yet it 



