The Erectnes'^ of Plants. 91 



is as worthy of an epic as the wanderings of Ulysses or the 

 travels of Marco Polo ; in fact, all the wanderings of primeval 

 men are dwarfed into hurried events of recent and local interest 

 in comparison with these journeys of the Groundsel in which 

 about sixty million square miles were traversed in some forty 

 million years. 



Lantern slides were shown to illustrate climatic and topographical 

 conditions, types of Conipositae, details of structure and existing geo- 

 graphical distribution. 



II.— THE ERECTNESS OF PLANTS. 



The reader could scarcely follow the theories and experi- 

 ments concerning the erectness of plants, which are expounded 

 below, without some preliminary explanation of what protoplasm 

 is conceived to be. Apart from the nucleus of each cell, the 

 protoplast may be regarded as an emulsion consisting chiefly of : — 



1. carbohydrates, such as sugars, starches, gums, mucilages, etc. ; 



2. proteins, which are nitrogenous compounds with some peculiar 

 properties ; 3. enzymes, which can be extracted from the cell, 

 then dried and preserved as non-living substances for an in- 

 definitely long time. The chemical composition and the physical 

 structure of the third group of substances are still unknown, but 

 it is known that they are closely associated in the cell with 

 protein matter, and that they arc not " alive." 



Disregarding entirely the almost infinite variety of possible 

 different combinations of nuclear material as chromosomes, and 

 taking of the numerous kinds of carbohydrates, proteins and 

 enzymes only two dozen of each group, the number of possible 

 combinations of these three classes of substances with 24 varieties 

 of each, is very much larger than the total number of species of 

 living organisms that exist or have existed on the earth. With 

 this suggested comparatively simple chemical composition for 

 cytoplasm we can, therefore, consider that each species may have 



