574 Agricultural Botany, [June, 
tending in the direction of least resistance, and so modifying its 
own nature as to become better fitted to meet such resistances as 
cannot be avoided. Each change is subject to transmissal through 
heredity, and thus through successive accretions, “ Holding the 
gain and answering for the loss” plants become so differentiated 
as to react favorably with their environment, and in the course ol 
time most numerous forms are established, each expressing the 
common motive in changes designed to meet a complex environ- 
ment in which the various factors are of greater or less domi- 
nancy. The necessity for a constant struggle for perpetuation, as 
nature’s law is, has made the reproductive organs paramount as 
expressing the method in which the plant-motive has been ful- 
filled, and hence the reproductive organs are dominant with the 
botanist for the purposes of classification, and the beautiful natu- 
ral system of botany has becorhe recognized as a science. 
We have, however, a class of plants in which another motive 
than that of survival has become dominant, and in which the 
reproductive organs have become subservient, and this because 
under the protection and guidance of man, the necessity for the 
struggle for existence has been removed, and the plant has beet 
left free to respond to new motives which have beem impress 
upon it. Our domesticated plants exist for man’s service, ak 
their own, and accordingly such have developed away © 
nature’s requirements towards man’s requirements. The or 
from a plant the necessity of warfare, and the substituting re 
conditions of peace and plenty, modifies such plant to some 
gree, but when in addition the motive is brought to saci 
with the desires of man by means of the process ar vat 
plants become profoundly modified in form and habit, an jae 
allelism of form is obtained which well illustrates the domi™™ 
of the new motive. Thus the wild cabbage has furnish other 
divergent forms, and these forms in themselves ren A 
forms which occur in plants of different species, ee ee 
natural orders. We have parallelism of form between sleaved 
the kale and parsley (dwarf curled kale and peat cabbage 
parsley), the cabbage, lettuce, chicory, etc. (Tourlavil d chard- 
cabbage-lettuce, scarole en cornet), the cabbage sat the moti 
beet (Pak-choi cabbage, white-leaf beet) according ye be seen if 
has been for leaf, head or stalk. This parallelism !$ 
various others of our domesticated vegetables. 
