NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 



It is but natural that out of all tne 

 intimate relationship he has borne to Nature 

 and out of all his many years of intense 

 study of her inner life upon so grand a scale, 

 he should have reached certain well-defined 

 theories. One of these pertains to heredity, 

 a term at best vague, which has been loosely 

 held. Out of the years of his investigations, 

 carried on upon such a colossal scale, he has 

 established the principle that heredity is 

 "the sum of all the effects of all the en- 

 vironment of all past generations, on the re- 

 sponsive, ever-moving life forces; or, in other 

 words, a record kept by the vital Principle 

 of its struggle onward and upM^ard from 

 simple forms of life; not vague in any re- 

 spect, but indelibly fixed by repetition." 



He condenses this into the statement : 

 Heredity is the sum of all past environment. 



Heredity now becomes something far 

 different from what it had before been held 

 to be. " Every plant, animal and planet," he 

 holds, "occupies its place in the order of 

 Nature by the action of two forces, — the 

 inherent constitutional life-force with all its 

 acquired habits, the sum of which is heredity ; 



346 



