THE LANGUAGE OF BOTANISTS. 5 



be regretted. However strong the desire to understand the secrets of plant-Hfe, 

 it could only be satisfied at the cost of learning a special scientific language; and 

 Botany would become, in an even greater degree than is the case at present, a close 

 study for specialists, instead of being the common property of the many inquiring 

 minds to whom the results of our researches by right belong. 



Accordingly, we shall retain so far as is practicable the recognized scientific 

 terms. Where they are no longer quite suitable they will be briefly elucidated; 

 and, when the conceptions to which they refer have been expanded or limited, the 

 old established names will also be taken in a wider or a narrower sense as the case 

 may be. New expressions will only be introduced where their use is productive of 

 greater clearness and distinctness in the ideas involved; and even these additions 

 must be in harmony with the terms already in existence. 



It is worthy of note too that many foreign words, which have been longest 

 established and also subject to frequent use by botanists, originally meant some- 

 thing altogether different from what they are intended to denote at the present 

 day. In the very first section of this volume a whole series of such words will be 

 employed. The history of the plant-individual is there dealt with. What is an 

 "individual"? The word comes from dividers, to divide, and denoted originally a 

 thing which is not divisible. But there is no such thing as an indivisible plant. 

 The survival of plants, their reproduction and multiplication, are all dependent on 

 processes of division; and any species whose individuals were not divisible, would 

 be doomed to inevitable destruction. The characteristic property of an individual 

 cannot therefore lie in absolute indivisibility. A qualification has in consequence 

 been inserted in the definition, and an individual is explained to be a thing which 

 cannot be divided without ceasing to be, as heretofore, an organized being subsisting 

 independently, in which each single part belong indispensably to the whole. Even 

 this definition is not appropriate to a plant. The living protoplast of a unicellular 

 plant — an organism which must without question be conceived as an individual — 

 divides into two halves, which separate from one another and constitute two 

 independent individuals. This instance affords, however, an indication of the true 

 definition. A plant-individual is an organism which can and does live indepen- 

 dently and without the aid of other organisms of the same form. There are plant- 

 individuals each of which consists of a single protoplast, whilst others are com- 

 posed of many protoplasts living together. In the latter there is for the most part 

 a division of labour accompanied by a corresponding variety in the forms of the 

 different parts of the individual; but even in these cases individuality is not 

 necessarily destroyed by division. Where division of labour has been carried so 

 far as it is in a plant provided with stem and leaves {cf. vol. i. p. 584), it used to 

 be thought necessary to look upon the structure as an association of individuals. 

 Each single shoot was conceived to be an individual because it possessed the power 

 of continuing to live after it had been separated from the axis, and on that 

 assumption each one of the higher plants was built up of such and such a number 

 of separate individuals. Later on, however, inasmuch as every branch of a shoot 



