ON CHEMICAL YIELDING PLANTS 



of provision for the multiplication of the species, 

 and has left the matter entirely to man. For in 

 giving up the habit of seed-production, the sugar- 

 cane has developed no complementary habit of 

 bulb production. It is propagated by cuttings, but 

 the agency of man is necessary to place those cut- 

 tings under proper conditions for growth. 



Left to its own devices, the cane would be likely 

 to give an illustration of race suicide. 



Rejuvenation Through Seed Production 



All this, however, seems out of harmony with 

 the illustrative case with which we began. 



For obviously the Trinidad physician could not 

 have found seedlings of the sugar-cane unless the 

 sugar-cane produces seed. In point of fact, it does 

 produce seed on rare occasions, but the habit has 

 been so nearly abandoned that most cultivators of 

 the plant supposed that it had been given up alto- 

 gether. The Trinidad case, however, shows that 

 Nature has not altogether abandoned the sugar- 

 cane to the good graces of man. She still on occa- 

 sion stimulates the plant to a revival of its long- 

 forgotten custom. And the benefits that result 

 from such revival will be obvious if we follow a 

 little farther the story of the grass-like seedlings 

 that the physician dug up in the cane-tields of 

 Trinidad. 



It appears that one of these seedlings, grown to 



[137] 



