252 MISS MARIETTA PALLIS ON THE 
accordingly its power of vegetative propagation is often commented on, in 
fact it is in itself held to be the cause of the difficulty—a clear indication of 
the general confusion which prevails as regards the individual in the 
vegetable kingdom as a whole. 
To *dominant" plants of the growth-form of the grasses the term 
“ association ” ill applies, even though certain stages of the growth of the 
dominant—open and closed reed-swamp for example—are well defined as 
regards the “ accompanying plants.” The accompanying plants in the case 
of the reed vary according to its stage of growth, no matter whether it be in 
association, that is to say, consist of several individuals produced from seed, 
or merely of a single individual, or part of one, viz. one stool. The “ vege- 
tative reproduction " of the reed I conceive as equivalent in essence to the 
growth of the tree, that is to say, as somatic development, not vegetative 
reproduction. The term vegetative reproduction I regard as a misnomer 
engendered by, and responsible for, much confusion of thought. 
Throughout this paper I postulate two plant units, or individuals: (1) a 
major—the soma—produced sexually, and (2) a minor, produced vegetatively, 
which builds the former up and is therefore contained within it. The major 
individual is, compared with the life of man, of long duration, and its 
limitation is therefore not obvious to us; moreover its soma may exist in 
several pieces, each piece consisting of one or several minor individuals. 
On the other hand, the minor individual is sufficiently short-lived to render 
the limitation of its life obvious. 
I regard the major plant unit, viz. the total vegetative output which one 
fertilized cell is capable of initiating, as the most important unit in the 
vegetable kingdom, and possibly throughout biology, and its mass as the 
measure of specific vital energy. The minor unit which I postulate is either 
the forerunner of the bud, or the bud, or the shoot (the grown bud)—that 
is the somatie portion, which is able to produce a replica of the specific 
soma. 
The minor plant unit is not a constant like the major—in the reed, at any 
rate, it decreases in size regularly with the age in generation of the shoot, 
and I believe that the plant (the major unit) finally ceases to produce it— 
hence the major unit dies. If sexual reproduction were therefore absent in 
any plant whatsoever, it would on the above conception cease to exist as a 
species. 
I have not yet attempted to define the major unit of the reed experimentally, 
but I have made observations which I think justify me in postulating it, and 
which I hope will enable me ultimately to attempt its calculation, though 
doubtless the difficulties will be many and great. With the forlorn hope of 
finding some material for a preliminary calculation of the major individual 
of another plant, the output of which I might compare with that of the 
reed (see pp. 268-269), [ searched through forestry data, but though a 
