If, then, this organic polarity (as we might figuratively call this proclivity towards a specific structural arrangement) can be possessed neither by the chemical units nor the morphological units, we must conceive it as possessed by certain intermediate units, which we may term _physiological_. There seems no alternative but to suppose that the chemical units combine into units immensely more complex than themselves, complex as they are; and that in each organism the physiological units produced by this further compounding of highly compound molecules, have a more or less distinctive character. We must conclude that in each case some difference of composition in the units, or of arrangement in their components, leading to some difference in their mutual play of forces, produces a difference in the form which the aggregate of them assumes. The facts contained in this chapter form but a small part of the evidence which thrusts this assumption upon us. We shall hereafter find various reasons for inferring that such physiological units exist, and that to their specific properties, more or less unlike in each plant and animal, various organic phenomena are due. CHAPTER V. ADAPTATION. § 67. In plants waste and repair being scarcely appreciable, there are not likely to arise appreciable changes in the proportions of already-formed parts. The only divergences from the average structures of a species, which we may expect particular conditions to produce, are those producible by the action of these conditions on parts in course of formation; and such divergences we do find. We know that a tree which, standing alone in an exposed position, has a short and thick stem, has a tall and slender stem when it grows in a wood; and that also its branches then take a different inclination. We know that potato-sprouts which, on reaching the light, develop into foliage, will, in the absence of light, grow to a length of several feet without foliage. And every in-door plant furnishes proof that shoots and leaves, by habitually turning themselves to the light, exhibit a certain adaptation--an adaptation due, as we must suppose; to the special effects of the special conditions on the still growing parts. In animals, however, besides analogous structural changes wrought during the period of growth, by subjection to circumstances unlike the ordinary circumstances, there are structural changes similarly wrought after maturity has been reached. Organs that have arrived at their full sizes possess a certain modifiability; so that while the organism as a whole retains pretty nearly the same bulk, the proportions of its parts may be considerably varied. Their variations, here treated of under the title Adaptation, depend on specialities of individual action. In the last chapter we saw that the actions of organisms entail re-actions on them; and that specialities of action entail specialities of re-action. Here it remains to be pointed out