  All available data indicate a surplus of baryon states over meson states for
energies greater than about 1.5 GeV. Since hadron-scale string theory suggests
that their numbers should become equal with increasing energy, it has recently
been proposed that there must exist exotic mesons with masses just above 1.7
GeV in order to fill the deficit. We demonstrate that a string-like picture is
actually consistent with the present numbers of baryon and meson states, and in
fact predicts regular oscillations in their ratio. This suggests a different
role for new hadronic states.
