TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 803 
phores of the higher plants, but it appears to me that they are rather to be 
compared to the ‘ grana’ which are found in the chloroplast, than to the chloroplast 
itself. 
12. The Virgin-woods of Java. By Dr. J. P. Lorsy. 
The two great forces which cause the character of these virgin-woods are 
moisture and light. By the former a number of hygrophilous leaf-structures are 
initiated. The author sees no reason to think that the hygrophilous structure of 
such leaves as Platycentrum multangulum and Nephrodium callosum are primitive 
to those genera; on the contrary, nearly allied species have leaves with a well- 
differentiated palisade- and sponge-parenchyma, It seems much more probable 
that these species are descendants of plants with a differentiated leaf-structure, 
which in some way or other entered the virgin-wood, and whose structure was 
modified by the moist atmosphere of the latter. 
The author has no doubt that a good many of the characteristic features of 
the virgin-wood, as the large lenticels found on many twigs, the great number of 
aerial roots developed by branches of the most different species, Cawliflory, which 
occurs among the most different families, are the result of a direct action of the 
surroundings here of the moist atmosphere in the wood, in the same way as the 
formation of aerenchyma on the stems of Lycopus enropeus when put in water is 
the direct result of the action of this water. 
It seems of the utmost importance not to speak of adaptation, or of direct 
adaptation, in cases like these, as such terms are misleading, inasmuch as adapta- 
tion should embrace only such changes in the form or structure of a plant as are 
useful modifications. Or many modifications, either experimentally produced—and 
I need but mention such names as Goebel, Klebs, and Véchting to brine before 
your mind a number of examples—or produced by Nature, need not be advan- 
tageous: they are frequently indifferent, or even harmful. 
Curt Herbst has, in an interesting article published some years ago in the 
‘ Biologisches Centralblatt,’ shown the existence of a number of such modifica- 
tions, which he calls hydromorphoses, barymorphoses, &c.; but it seems to the 
author that for all such cases one single collective term should be used, indicating 
that the form of each individual plant is not a form innate to that plant, but is 
the result of that which Klebs calls its specific structure and the sum of all eaternal 
circumstances which have acted upon it. 
Or, in other words, to put it in a drastic way, a plant has not one definite 
form caused by its specific structure (on the contrary, the latter allows it, a3 
Klebs especially showed, a rather large variety of forms), nor is it at liberty to 
choose between a number of possible forms, but every individual has to take that 
form which external circumstances force upon it. 
The form which an individual plant takes is consequently neither the only 
form which it could make under any circumstances nor a choice between a 
number of possible forms, but a form forced upon it, or, to use a Greek word: a 
BIAIOMORPHOSE. 
It seems to the author that the introduction of this or an equivalent word would 
do good service, especially in making clear the opinions regarding direct adaptation 
and similar questions. In his opinion direct adaptation savours too much 
of teleology, and gives rise too easily to misconception, as if the plant thought out 
the consequences of the one or the other measure to prevent mischief, while the 
word biaiomorphose says nothing more than it means, viz., expresses the fact 
that the surroundings mould the plastic plant-body into the form which we see. 
It seems, therefore, preferable to call such cases, as described above, cases of 
biaiomorphose, caused by the moisture of the virgin-wood, and to limit the word 
adaptation to those referred to below. The author thinks it highly probable that 
many useful structures have arisen accidentally as biaiomorphoses, together with 
a large number of useless or even harmful ones, 
The latter, if sufficiently harmful, disappeared in the struggle for life; the 
former might either perish or remain along with the first. This would depend 
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