202 THE INDUCTIONS OF BIOLOGY. 



specific peculiarities. Shall we regard all the growing axes 

 thus resulting from slips and grafts and buds, as parts of one 

 individual, or as distinct individuals ? If a strawberry- plant 

 sends out runners carrying buds at their ends, which strike 

 root and grow into independent plants, that separate from 

 the original one by decay of the runners, must we not say 

 that they possess separate individualities ; and yet if we do 

 this, are we not at a loss to say when their separate individu- 

 alities were established, unless we admit that each bud was 

 from the beginning an individual ? Commenting on such 

 perplexities, Schleiden says " Much has been written and 

 disputed concerning the conception of the individual, with- 

 out, however, elucidating the subject, principally owing to 

 the misconception that still exists as to the origin of the con- 

 ception. Now the individual is no conception, but the mere 

 subjective comprehension of ail actual object, presented to us 

 under some given specific conception, and on this latter it 

 alone depends whether the object is or is not an individual. 

 Under the specific conception of the solar system, ours is an 

 individual : in relation to the specific conception of a planet- 

 ary body, it is an aggregate of many individuals." * * * "I 

 think, however, that looking at the indubitable facts 

 already mentioned, and the relations treated of in the course of 

 these considerations, it will appear most advantageous and 

 most useful, in a scientific point of view, to consider the 

 vegetable cell as the general type of the plant (simple plant 

 of the first order). Under this conception, Protococcus and 

 other plants consisting of only one cell, and the spore and 

 pollen- granule, will appear as individuals. Such individuals 

 may, however, again, with a partial renunciation of their in- 

 dividual independence, combine under definite laws into 

 definite forms (somewhat as the individual animals do in the 

 globe of the Vohox ylobator*}. These again appear empiri- 

 cally as individual beings, under a conception of a species 



* It is now generally agreed that the Volvox globaior is a plant. 



