12 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



seeing it has been tapped all the way up by the 

 leaves. Hence these terminal starved buds tend to 

 develop into flowers. Flowers are also produced 

 in the axils of leaves, or on separate long stalks, as 

 the Daisy and Dandelion, so that a large quantity 

 of sap cannot reach them. If too much of food 

 supply should be furnished, the latter kind of flow- 

 ers " sport," and " monstrosities " are invariably the 

 result. 



A plant or tree, small or great, is in reality a 

 colony of vegetable organisms — just as a "Sea-fir" 

 {Sertidarid) among the Zoophytes is a colony of 

 hydra-like animals. The latter have a fluid flesh 

 (sarcode) in common, just as leaves and flowers are 

 supplied by the same flow of sap. At certain times 

 of the year the Sertularians develop special buds 

 or capsules {goiiophores), which contain the larvae 

 or young. These are cast in the water, and usually 

 assume some jelly-fish-like shape. This parallelism 

 between a colony of Sertularian polypes, vegetative 

 and reproductive, and a plant with its leaf- buds 

 and flower- buds may be still further illustrated by 

 the life -history of the common Aphis. Generation 

 after generation is produced by the latter, without 

 the intervention of the male insect, by a process 

 of budding. Then ensue the sexual individuals, 

 possessing wings, so that they can remove to a dis- 

 tance, and commence the work of founding a new 

 Aphis colony. Similarly the parts of plants we call 



