748 THE RELATION BETWEEN ORGANIC VIGOR AND SEX. 
_ of vitality only which take on the female form.”* His facts have 
referred mainly to Conifer and Amentacee, although not confined 
to them. 
The hesitation felt by many minds in regard to the acceptance of 
the above proposition has originated, chiefly, from the familiarity 
of the principle that “there is a certain degree of antagonism 
between the nutritive and the generative functions, the one being 
executed at the expense of the other ;” along with the weight of 
some very familiar facts concerning the generally greater size and 
muscular strength of the male among animals (with a few excep- 
tions, as in certain raptorial birds and arachnida), as well as the 
equally general superiority of male birds in voice and plumage. 
Some of the facts in regard to plants cited in the papers referred 
to may possibly bear a different, even an opposite, interpretation 
to that given by Mr. Meehan. In his example of the larch, for 
instance, when we notice that after surviving several years of 
the repeated production of female flowers, the branches or spurs 
“bear male flowers and diet,” is it not possible that the demand 
for organic force required in the evolution of male flowers causes 
their exhaustion? In another place { Mr. Meehan speaks of “ the 
loss of power to branch,” which in the Scotch pine, “ the formation 
of male flowers induces.” This view might comport, at least, with 
the ordinary statements of physiologists, as represented by Dr. 
Carpenter § who refers to the contrast between Alge, in which 
individual construction is especially active, while the fructifying 
organs are obscure, and fungi, in which almost the whole plant 
seems made up of reproductive organs, upon the maturing of 
which the plant ceases to exist. This contrast between nutrition 
and reproduction appears again in the larval and perfect stages 
of insect life; the one being devoted to nutrition and the other 
to reproduction. Is there any doubt that, in the dahlia and other 
Composite cultivation alters fertile florets of the disk into barren 
florets of the ray? The gardener’s common use of the principle 
of limiting nutrition for the increase of reproduction is allud | 
to by Mr. Meehan in his paper of 1870,|| in speaking of a branch 
being “ partially ringed to produce fruitfulness.” ; 
*Procd. of Am. Assoc. for Ady. Science, 1869, p. 260. 
t Procd. Am. Assoc. for Ady. Science, 1869, p. 257. 
ł Procd. Acad. Nat. Sciences, Phila. 1869, No. 2, p. 122. 
§ Principles of Comparative Physiology, p. 147. 
|| Procd. of Am. Assoc. for Adv. Science. 
