THE COSMIC ADAPTATION OF THE SEED 459 



of pressure of the life-conditions, being least advanced where the 

 conditions are most repressive (and in such cases it might even be 

 restricted to the seed-stage), and most advanced where the conditions 

 are light and easy, allowing the relatively unhindered growth of stem 

 and foliage. 



(9) From such a standpoint the flowering and seeding of 

 terrestrial plants would present themselves as the result of an increase 

 in the repressive conditions, or of a tendency to return to the cosmic 

 state ; whilst vegetative reproduction or the proliferous habit would 

 mark the expansion of the conditions of existence and the fuller 

 growth of the plant. This goes to explain why in horticulture seeding 

 is most favoured by harsh treatment and vegetative reproduction and 

 foliage by generous treatment. 



(10) The terrestrial scale of possibilities of plant-life may offer in 

 its extremes indications of the direction of plant-growth in other 

 worlds. Under the most repressive conditions, such as prevail on the 

 lunar surface, plants may be confined to the cotyledonary stage, as in 

 the case of Welwitschia^ or restricted only to the seed-stage. Where 

 the conditions are most conducive to growth, the climatic environ- 

 ment may favour in one planet huge plant-organisms like those of 

 Catamites^ and in another planet vegetation of the Sequoia habit. 



(u) It is on its cosmic side that a plant is most persistent and least 

 mutable, namely, in the seed-stage. This explains why terrestrial 

 plants have often little else in common than their seed-characters. It 

 is on their cosmic side that the primal affinity of plants lies. 



(12) The principle of "cosmic adaptation" above assumed is an 

 extension of the principle adopted as concerning the earth, that all 

 terrestrial plant-organisms are generally adapted to the earth's conditions, 

 and specially adapted to their particular environment on that planet. 

 So, it is argued, a plant-organism may be specially adapted to the earth 

 as a separate world and generally adapted to the earth as a part of 

 the cosmos. Strip an organism of its special terrestrial adaptations and 

 the residuum will be the link connecting it with the life of other worlds. 

 It is on its cosmic side that a terrestrial organism will usually present 

 itself as out of harmony with the earth's conditions, and it is on the 

 cosmic side that all investigations will present an unfinished border, 

 a side that fits with nothing in our experience or system. The 

 biological problems of the future will be mainly concerned with the 

 disinterment of the cosmic adaptation from beneath the terrestrial 

 adaptations that lie heaped upon it. 



(13) Nothing in the sense of the evolutionary theory of the pro- 

 gressive development of types has been implied in the foregoing discussion, 

 which is concerned only with the different stages of development of the 

 same plant-type under the pressure of the life-conditions. But if we 



