THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



No. 93. DECEMBER 1844. 



XL VI I. — On the Morphology of the Reproductive System of the 

 Sertularian Zoophyte, and its analogy with the Reproductive 

 System of the Flowering Plant. By Prof. E. Forbes, of King's 

 College, London*. 



[With a Plate.] 



The celebrated Grew, in his ' Idea of a Phytological History pro- 

 pounded/ among other recommendations of the study of vege- 

 table anatomy, urges that u it may frequently conduct our minds 

 to the consideration of the state of animals, as whether there are 

 not divers material agreements betwixt them and plants, and 

 what they are." The present communication has sprung out of 

 such an application of phytological science. 



The doctrine of the ideal metamorphosis of the leaf or vegeta- 

 ble individual in order to play a part in the reproduction of the 

 species is now no longer a qucestio vexata, but an article of faith 

 with the philosophical botanist. The mind of Linnseus discovered 

 it, the spirit of Goethe divined it, and now that naturalists have 

 been taught to trust in it by the experience of continued research, 

 none but a botanical sceptic will venture to dispute it. 



The doctrine of the vegetable individual is presented in its 

 most precise form in the recent essays of Gaudichaud. His type 

 or phyton, of an assemblage of which types the plant is composed, 

 consists in itself of a limb or lamina, an ascending axis and a de- 

 scending axis. Such a type is essentially respiratory and nutri- 

 tive, and devoted to the life of the individual or congeries of in- 

 dividuals, and must be modified by a metamorphosis, usually re- 

 trograde, always ideal, ere it beomes a reproductive organ, and 

 is devoted to the service and perpetuation of the species. 



The plant, such as it presents itself usually to our view, is a 

 composite being, made up of many such individuals, some serving 

 to the nourishment of the composite individual or entirety, 

 some metamorphosed either singly or in numbers, so as to assist 

 in the propagation of the species of which that composite being 

 is a member. That composite being is a commonwealth, all the 



* Read at the Meeting of the British Association at York in Sept. 1844. 

 Ann. $ Mag. N. Hist. Vol.xiv. 2D 



