178 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 840 



Wisconsin-Minnesota area produces sucli remark- 

 able waxen and pruinose tints. The influence of 

 the climate is nowhere so easily traced, perhaps, 

 as in the business of seed growing. Every seeds- 

 man knows that certain climates are not only 

 best adapted to growth of certain seed crops, but 

 that they exert a profound influence upon the 

 character of the product grown by them. The 

 study of all these interrelations of climate and 

 plant life falls into three subjects: phenology, or 

 the study of the periodic phenomena of plants, a 

 subject which loses half its value when consid- 

 ered, as it usually is, without reference to the 

 visible attending features of climate; acclimatiza- 

 tion, or a consideration of the means by which 

 plants adapt themselves to climates at first in- 

 jurious; and secondary variations of plants in- 

 duced by climate environment. 



The burden of my plea is twofold: First, while 

 not discouraging the instrumental or conventional 

 study of climate, I would encourage its study in 

 terms of plant life. Second, it is essential that 

 the synchronisms of local climate and the phe- 

 nomena of plants be given the closest attention. 



Sedgwick'" is quite clear as to the direc- 

 tion of the changes ; but I can not see that 

 he makes any actual use of this as a work- 

 ing hypothesis. 



It is a property of living matter to react in a 

 remarkable way to external forces without under- 

 going destruction. The life-cycle, of which the 

 embryonic and larval periods are a part, consists 

 of the orderly interaction between the organism 

 and its environment. The action of environment 

 produces certain morphological changes in its 

 organism. These changes enable the organism to 

 come into what is practically a new environment, 

 which in its turn produces further structural 

 changes in the organism. These in turn enable, 

 indeed necessitate, the organism to move again 

 into a new environment, and so the process con- 

 tinues until the structural changes are of such a 

 nature that the organism is unable to adapt itself 

 to the environment in which it finds itself. The 

 essential condition of success in this process is 

 that the organism should always shift into the 

 environment to which the new structure is suited 

 — any failure in this leading to the impairment 

 of the organism. In most cases the shifting of 

 the environment is a very gradual process 

 (whether consisting in the very slight and grad- 

 ual alteration in the relation of the embryo as a 



""Darwin and Modern Science," 177, 1909. 



whole to the egg-shell or uterine wall, or in the 

 relations of its parts to each other, or in the suc- 

 cessive phases of adult life), and the morpholog- 

 ical changes in connection with each step of it are 

 but slight. But in some cases jumps are made 

 such as we find in the phenomena known as hatch- 

 ing, birth and metamorphosis. This property of 

 reacting to the environment without undergoing 

 destruction is, as has been stated, a fundamental 

 property of organisms. It is impossible to con- 

 ceive of any matter to which the term living 

 could be applied being without it. And with this 

 property of reacting to the environment goes the 

 further property of undergoing a change which 

 alters the relation of the organism to the old 

 environment and places it in a new environment. 



This quotation is not what we want, be- 

 cause Sedgwick is considering the life cycle 

 of an individual, which is not our prob- 

 lem at all. It is good as far as it goes, 

 however, and it is the best that I have been 

 able to find.''^ 



We get the opposite extreme with Bate- 

 son,'2 who says: 



To those who have made no study of heredity 

 it sometimes appears that the question of the 

 effect of conditions in causing variation is one 

 which we should immediately investigate, but a 

 little thought will show that before any critical 

 inquiry into such possibilities can be attempted, 

 a knowledge of the working of heredity under 

 conditions as far as possible uniform must be 

 obtained. 



The cap seems to fit and I am quite 

 ready to put it on. Bateson's argument is 

 simply that a change due to reversion might 

 be interpreted as due to a change in environ- 

 ment. This is a possible source of error; 

 but it is one which can be eliminated by 

 making enough experiments and by ma- 

 king experiments with different species of 

 plants. It is hardly conceivable that a re- 

 version to an albino variety, for instance, 

 should coincide with a given change of en- 

 vironment in every experiment and with 

 every kind of plant. On the other hand, 



"Cf. also Bourne, Science, 32, 738, 1910. 

 '- " Darwin and Modern Science," 95, 1909. 



