56 Transactions Tennessee Academy of Science 



materials that lie within it as well as upon the reflecting" walls of 

 the instrument itself. For this reason a man with an entirely new 

 set of ideas imported from a different but related field may discover 

 relations not before dreamed of by occupants of the invaded terri- 

 tory. Plant physiology, for instance, has recently received such a 

 shock from the ingenious researches of Bose, the Hindoo physico- 

 physiologist. 



I hasten, however, to assure you that I have made no discoveries, 

 sensational or otherwise, to announce to you this evening. It is my 

 ambition merely to bring to your attention certain analogies be- 

 tween the behavior of plants and animals placed under abnormal 

 environment, or under pathological conditions. These symptoms or 

 habits are for the most part well known to specialists in either 

 field, but their mutual relations are sometimes overlooked by both. 



If two groups of organisms show fundamental similarities in 

 development or behavior under normal conditions, we should natu- 

 rally expect them to exhibit to some extent at least resemblances in 

 their reactions to abnormal conditions. 



When we contrast the bodies of higher plants and animals we 

 are at first struck with the great differences in their anatomy. These 

 differences are great, but the more closely we study them, especially 

 in the construction of their constituent units, the individual cells, 

 the more striking do their resemblances become. I shall later show 

 a few concrete illustrations which will better bring out these facts, 

 and for the present call your attention to the construction of the 

 cell units composing typical higher plants and higher animals. 



In the first place, every plant and every animal here under con- 

 sideration begins life as a single cell, this cell formed by the union 

 of two parent cells, the egg and the sperm. By cell multiplication 

 the mature individual finally results as a community of co-operating 

 units, only to repeat the process. 



There are differences in structure between the cells of plants and 

 animals, but these difierences consist rather in their enclosing walls 

 than in the essential living protoplast. 



These structural units then, are quite siinikir in the two kingdoms: 

 What about their sej)arate functions and the combined functions 

 of them all in the inilividual mature organism? I have already 

 called to your attention the fad ihal their mode of reproduction, 

 the exclusive act of two individual cells, is identical. The functions 

 of an individual organism, however complex, can only be the' sum 



