Centroepigencsis in Plants 71 
but quantitatively different, starting successively always 
from the same point could thus give rise to a succession 
of dynamic systems of as complex a configuration as one 
could imagine. Different series, that is to say those in 
which quantitative variations of the same dynamic ac- 
tion succeed one another in different ways, would natur- 
ally give rise also to dynamic systems of different 
configuration. 
We can compare, though only roughly, this water 
which enters the container always by the same opening 
and with a velocity changing every instant, to the series 
of nervous currents of different specificity which, accord- 
ing to our hypothesis, would be discharged into the soma 
in the course of development, or into the great mass of 
yolk, by the activity of the germinal substance, always 
from one and the same point of the organism, which 
would thus constitute the central zone of development. 
It would be proper at this point to touch upon the 
probable location of this central zone. But important as 
it is we do not need to stop long over it. 
It is necessary at the outset to notice in a very general 
way that in plants, and especially in the higher plants, 
one must regard the leaf as the true individual and one 
must attribute to it a centroepigenesis of its own. The 
flower would then be merely the product of numerous 
centroepigeneses not entirely independent of one another: 
The corresponding simultaneous or rapidly successive 
activations of multiple centers, and the reciprocal action 
of these centers upon one another, would be indeed the 
agents by which modifications of each of the centro- 
epigeneses is effected, so as to produce for example here 
a petal and there a pistil instead of an ordinary leaf. 
It would also be possible for a center or a definite 
