June 23, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



879 



ena are the properties of a substance called 

 protoplasm. In both plants and animals 

 this substance is organized into the form of 

 cells. In both, usually, it is the outer pro- 

 toplasmic membrane that controls the pas- 

 sage of ions, the disassociated electrically 

 charged elements of water and other com- 

 pounds. The same wonderful process of 

 cell-multiplieation by mitosis occurs in both 

 plants and animals. In both, except in the 

 lowest forms, these cells are organized into 

 tissues, with division of labor. In both 

 there is a sexual method of reproduction. 

 Plants, indeed, propagate also non-sexually 

 hy hiidddng, but so do many of the lower 

 animals. In many plants there is regenera- 

 tion when parts are cut away, but so there 

 is in a great variety of animals. Even 

 their foods are not different. It is true, the 

 plant differs decidedly from the animal in 

 possessing an apparatus for elaborating 

 inorganic substances into starch, sugar and 

 proteids which the animal consumes, but 

 it makes these substances for its own use, 

 not for the animal. It is sometimes as- 

 sumed that the inorganic substances, of 

 earth, air and water, are the food of the 

 plant, but such is not the case. The plant 

 depends for its growth on the same nutrient 

 substances as the herbivorous animals, viz., 

 on starch, sugar and proteids, which it has 

 stored in every seed and under every grow- 

 ing bud. The phenomena of birth, growth 

 and decay are essentially the same in plants 

 and in animals ; but corresponding to higher 

 development, the animal has many special 

 organs either wanting altogether in the 

 plant, or greatly simplified; it also has 

 flexible cell-walls while the plant has rigid 

 cell-walls; but both plants and animals 

 respire; both assimilate food substance, and 

 oxidize them with resultant work; both re- 

 quire about the same amount of water and 

 mineral salts; both have a circidation of 

 fluids; and both secrete and excrete a vari- 



ety of substances, acid, alkaline and neutral. 

 The response to stimidi, such as gravity, 

 heat, light, radium. X-ray, electricity and 

 poisons, is much the same in both groups. 

 In irritable response plants and animals 

 both obey Weber's law (called also 

 Feehner's law and the psycho-physic law), 

 that is, to increase a response in an arith- 

 metical ratio the stimulus must be applied 

 in a geometrical ratio. There is a sugges- 

 tion, even, of a nervous system in plants 

 since stimuli are passed along certain 

 channels to distant organs and the move- 

 ment can be slowed down by cold, increased 

 by heat or inhibited by poisons applied 

 midway, the response, according to Bose, 

 being not simply hydro-mechanical. Even 

 the idea of locomotion does not distinguish 

 animals from plants. Many of the lower 

 animals are rooted fast, while many of the 

 lower plants have swimming organs and 

 are actively motile. Moreover, all of the 

 higher plants change position more or less ; 

 all are sensitive; all show rhythmic move- 

 ments. Finally, the intimate cell-chemistry 

 of the two groups (production of digestive 

 enzymes, amino acids, etc.) , so far as known, 

 is much alike. There is no a priori reason, 

 therefore, why a special stimulus to cell 

 division in plants might not prove to be of 

 the highest interest to students of cancer 

 in man and the lower animals. It is a 

 matter to be taken up like any other and 

 tested out. Researches on crown gall should 

 have been undertaken long ago in every 

 cancer laboratory in the world and would 

 have been had we not unfortunately dis- 

 covered a parasite. That killed the whole 

 subject in the eyes of the orthodox! Not 

 having found a parasite themselves, they 

 will not believe that any one else can do it, 

 or that there is one ; and this in .spite of the 

 fact that the history of parasitic diseases 

 from Pasteur's time down shows clearly 



