We may gather from this
fact that the simpler organs of plants low in the evolutionary scale
contain simpler non-nitrogenous chemical compounds for their
nutrition.
The presence of saponin seems essential to the life of the plant where
it is found, and it is an indispensable principle in the progression
of certain lines of plants, passing from their lower to their higher
stages.
Saponin is invariably absent where the floral elements are simple; it
is invariably absent where the floral elements are condensed to their
greatest extent. Its position is plainly that of a factor in the great
middle realm of vegetable life, where the elements of the individual
are striving to condense, and thus increase their physiological action
and the economy of parts.
It may be suggested as a line of research to study what are the
conditions which control the synthesis and gradual formation of
saponin in plants. The simpler compounds of which this complex
substance is built up, if located as compounds of lower plants, would
indicate the lines of progression from the lower to the saponin
groups.
In my paper[47] read in Buffalo at the last meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, various suggestions were
offered why chemical compounds should be used as a means of botanical
classification.
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