ACCUMULATION IN STEMS 191 



of misunderstanding which is worse, from the standpoint 

 of science, than no understanding at all. It is not im- 

 portant for you to remember a great number of facts about 

 plants, but it is important that you should have no such 

 misunderstandings about them. Your knowledge, so far 

 as it goes, should be based on sound conceptions, for, if 

 so, it is possible to understand plants without knowing a 

 great deal about them. The right understanding of a 

 little knowledge is the principal aim of this course. 



A . Why not " Storage " ? You note that the title of this 

 section is accumulation in stems. Why not storage in stems ? 

 The latter expression would probably suggest to you about 

 the same thing as the former, and yet there is a great 

 difference involved. The use of one or the other of these 

 words implies a correct or an incorrect conception of plant 

 life. 



Many people think of plants as " storing " food for later 

 use somewhat as men and animals store it for later use. 

 But the word storage implies forethought, and for that 

 reason it is objectionable as applied to plants. We have 

 no evidence at all that plants have anything like fore- 

 thought or intention; indeed all our evidence is to the 

 contrary. All our evidence goes to indicate that plants, 

 in their growth and behavior, respond to various stimuli, 

 such as have been noted. These stimuli may be inside 

 the plant or they may be outside of it or they may be 

 both, but, wherever they are, they are the causes of plant 

 behavior, and the plant, we think, reacts to them with no 

 more power to interfere than a falling ball has power to 

 interfere with gravitation. There is no such thing as 

 judgment in a plant. The plant does what it does simply 



