CONSERVATION AND CORRELATION OF VITAL FORCE. 333 
It is, then, with no claim to originality that this is written, but 
rather to call for the more general recognition of a law already 
noted by the more observing ones. We may be unable to explain 
it, or, what is still more damaging to its chances of acceptance, be 
unable to show how it is to chime in directly with any form of evo- 
lution; for to this we have all now come; still it remains a law, 
as active as any other, even though it be less sharply defined. 
If called upon to express what I believe concerning it, I would 
say: that all organic things, plants or animals, have a certain pro- 
portionate amount of developing force, actual or predestined, and 
_ that this synergy is under the direction of inherited tendencies; 
which being at times misdirected, one organ or set of organs may 
take on excessive growth. Should this occur, there will be a cor- 
responding atrophy in some other organ or set of organs. Now 
against this statement of what I conceive to be underlying all 
growth, many instances can be adduced. Still the facts in its 
favor, when fairly marshalled, seem to me so preponderating as to 
make them more than mere coincidences. 
The scope of this paper allows me to cite but a few out of the 
many instances I could give. Among plants, take as an illustra- 
tion Larrea Mexicana Moric., the creosote plant of the southwest. 
It is a representative of the bean-caper family. Inside the base 
of each filament (which is filiform) is a large two-cleft scale con- 
Spicuous enough to attract attention. It is not unusual to find 
filaments whose bases are not filiform, but are broadly expanded. 
Erodium Texanum Gray is a capital example of this. Besides, 
this same plant has an outer circle of five stamens which are 
minus their anthers, a fact which I might turn to account in my 
argument did space permit. > 
Now morphology would settle the question concerning the es- 
sential nature of the scales of Larrea, by saying that they are the 
homological equivalents of the stipules we usually find on the right 
and left sides of the petioles of leaves, and more or less intimately 
united with them, only in this case instead of being lateral they 
are intra-petiolar, i.e., between the petiole and the axis of the plant, 
_ just as the stipules are occasionally found. To this explanation 
_ RO exception can be taken, in so far as it goes. But the question 
still remains unanswered, why it is, when most plants have neither 
these scales nor the broad bases to their filaments, in the example © 
Thave just given, where a decided tendency to cell proliferation 
