and its relation to that in the Animal Kingdom. 449 



order to form the foundation of a series of individuals produced 

 from the conjugated structure by asexual multiplication*. The 

 Protozoa exhibit to us an exactly similar condition in the Animal 

 Kingdomt. 



Sect. III. The different Phases of Development in the Vegetable 



Kingdom. 



Having recognized the act of fecundation as a universally 

 equivalent formative process, in the majority of the divisions 

 of the Vegetable Kingdom (excepting, namely, the Fungi and 

 Lichens), and as corresponding to the act of fecundation in 

 the Animal Kingdom, we may consider ourselves justified in in- 

 quiring how far the stages of development preceding and suc- 

 ceeding this act correspond in various places, and how far the 

 organs most intimately concerned in it stand parallel to each 

 other in physiological and, to some extent, in morphological 

 respects. We do not, indeed, propose to give a detailed exposi- 

 tion of this plan, but must confine ourselves in general to giving 

 merely indications, especially in those cases where the matter 

 seems to declare itself immediately as a result of the facts given 

 above, and entering upon minute discussion only in reference 

 to the more important points. Where gaps occur in the text, the 

 tabular surveys will conveniently complete it, and we therefore 

 refer the reader to them (pp. 457, 458, 459). 



In the Vegetable Kingdom, as in the Animal Kingdom, the 

 fecundated germinal mass presents itself as the first rudiment of 

 a new individual being J. This either remains as such, and sooner 

 or later acquires the capacity to act in the sexual generation of 

 new plants, which course of development we must designate as 

 the highest, in a physiological point of view, of which either 

 plant or animal is capable, — or it multiplies asexually before it 

 has attained this stage. The same form of this asexual multi- 



* Alex. Braun, Verjiingung (Ray Translation, 18v^l, p. 135). 



t Siebold, Zeitschr. f. wiss. Zoologie, iii. p. 62. 



X I use the term * individual ' only in the ordinary sense, not desiring 

 to enter upon an exhaustive definition of it here, — as a single being which 

 presents itself as a living, independent, finite whole, — and this I do on 

 physiological grounds. If, with Alex. Braun, from morphological consi- 

 derations, we apply the term 'individual' to the shoot, calling, for instance, 

 a tree a colony of polymorphous individuals, a vegetable stock (or phyti- 

 dom), analogous to the polype-stock or polypidom, — which, however, in 

 a physiological point of view can likewise only be placed beside the simple 

 animal (see Leuckart, Wagner's Handworterbuch d. Physiol., Article * Zeu- 

 gung,' B. iii. p. 976), — the results of the following reflections would be 

 altered in the main only so far that we must assign to the alternation of 

 generations a much more comprehensive field of operation in the Vegetable 

 Kingdom than we are here inclined to do ; at the same time we see that 

 phsenomenon assume far more complicated conditions. We shall return to 

 this point. 



Ann. ^ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol. xx. 29 



