SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



157 



THE CLIMACTERIC IN EVOLUTION. 



By F. T. Mott, F.R.G.S. 



TN the September number of Science-Gossip, 

 the Rev. Hilderic Friend, in his "Botanical 

 Jottings," starts a question regarding the flowers 

 of the guelder-rose, which leads direct to one of 

 the most fundamental controversies of modern 

 science : Do individual organisms exist for the sake 

 of continuing the species ? 



Is reproduction the aim and end of individual 

 life ? Is it true that Nature is careless of the 

 individual, and careful only of the species ? Or, 

 is the individual the real and important unit, and 

 the species a mere group of units ? The indi- 

 vidual the thing which develops and evolves, 

 while the species is no more than the aspect of the 

 changing group at a given moment ? Or, is there 

 not a theory more probable than either of these — 

 viz., that the individual, the species, the genus, the 

 order, etc., are all phenomena of similar and equal 

 value ; all waves of cosmic activity of which the 

 smaller are constituents of the larger, while the 

 larger are constituents of the still larger, and so on 

 ad infinitum: the species being an evolving wave of 

 which the constituent elements are the evolving 

 individuals, while the genus is also an evolving 

 wave of still greater complexity, made up of the 

 evolving species ? 



If we conceive of these waves of cosmic activity 

 not as simple oscillations or undulations, but in the 

 more complex form of concentraitjig waves, that is, 

 as exhibiting in their first phase a concentration of 

 energy towards a central climacteric, and in their 

 second phase a dispersion of energy towards the 

 circumference, we shall recognize that every such 

 wave has a definite limit and must finally become 

 extinct. In this necessity the theory corresponds 

 with and explains the primary condition of all 

 organic life. It explains much more than this. It 

 makes the wonders of evolution comprehensible, 

 and throws much light both upon the past and the 

 future ; upon the geological record, and the in- 

 evitable development of beauty. Evolution is the 

 progress of a wave towards its climacteric ; when 

 this is reached there comes retrogression and 

 extinction. If we find ourselves in an evolving 

 universe, it means that the end is not yet ; that the 

 great inclusive infinitely complex wave, of whose 

 limits we can know nothing, is still rolling upwards 

 towards a climacteric of inconceivable beauty. 

 Many of its constituent waves reach their climac- 

 terics and are dispersed ; but their places are filled 

 by other concentrations of still higher possibilities, 

 and always it can be shown that visible beauty is 

 the sure signature of an approaching climacteric. 

 What is beauty ? It is primarily a mental idea 



due to the perception of relationship among a group 

 of sensations. For the perception of such relation- 

 ship by human minds, it is necessary that the 

 group of sensations should be actually related in 

 close and simple proportions, and it is one o£ the 

 necessary results of the concentrating wave that 

 its constituents should be brought into closer 

 relations to each other as the climacteric is 

 approached. Thus the human mind recognizes 

 that relationship only when the wave is near 

 maturity, and beauty becomes the mark of such 

 maturity. 



Let us return to our guelder-rose. In the highest 

 vegetable structure there are four distinct systems 

 of tissue, viz., the fundamental cellular tissue, the 

 woody stem and branch system, the fibrous leaf 

 system and the sensitive blossom. These are 

 consecutively developed in this order. The blossom 

 is the final climacteric of the individual. In most 

 perennial plants there are subordinate annual 

 climacterics of blossom, but in each individual there 

 comes some one year when its blooming-power 

 is at its maximum. Sexual reproduction is asso- 

 ciated in plants with this latest phenomenon of 

 their development, the blossom ; but other methods 

 of reproduction, by buds, by gemmae, by stolons, 

 etc., have no connection with the blossom. The 

 progressive development of blossom, from the 

 ferns, through the cycads and palms, to the 

 present lilies and orchids, and from the lycopods, 

 through thee oniferae and the amentiferas, to the 

 roses, the leguminosse and the labiates, is very 

 striking. The progress is in size, in form and 

 in colour, and always in the direction of greater 

 beauty. 



In the light of this reasoning I should reply to 

 Mr. Friend's question, " Which is the typical form 

 of the guelder-rose ? " that the only one which can 

 be properly called typical is the garden form. The 

 others are successive steps towards the attainment 

 of that climacteric in which the corolla, which is 

 the essential part of the fiower, is developed in its 

 utmost beauty. 



I am quite aware that all this is botanical heresy. 

 Every useful thought has been heresy in its day. 

 Fifty years hence it may be sound orthodoxy. .A.ny 

 way, this is one possible view of the system of 

 nature, and it seems to me a much more satis- 

 factory theory than what is held to be orthodox at 

 the close of this nineteenth century. I have only 

 sketched it in the barest outline to indicate my 

 ground for calling the beautiful "snowball-tree" 

 the most typical form of the guelder-rose. 

 Crescent House, Leicester ; September, 1896. 



