306 BR. M. J. SCHLEIDEN ON PHYTOGENESIS. 



and similar axes, and conceive as an individual in the organic 

 world, that body which cannot, without losing its idea of totality, 

 be divided into two or several, and whose vital process has a 

 fixed point of beginning and ending in definite periodicity, it 

 thence follows that only the herbaceous {planta annua) and the 

 true biennial plants, which flower in the second year and then 

 die off entirely, can be considered as individuals in the vege- 

 table kingdom. The idea of individual life necessarily requires 

 for a character individual death as a condition of the organiza- 

 tion itself. But where such a death does not exist as a final 

 termination from internal necessity, as an internal precondi- 

 tioned cessation of the organizing force, there individuality 

 must be out of the question. But this is only the case in the 

 above-mentioned plants; and, consequently, from them solely 

 must we set out, as from the prototype, in all inquiries regard- 

 ing the nature and Ufe of the vegetable organism. 



To prepare for a transition to what follows, I shall turn to the 

 exposition of the two different modes of propagation. It either 

 takes place by a process which has hitherto been termed in 

 plants impregnation, and to which has been ascribed a sexual 

 difference, (Wiegmann's Archiv, 1837, Vol. i. p. 200, &c.) or by 

 division, the plant, for instance, developing on itself a per- 

 fectly similar individual, and then at a certain time dismissing it. 

 This latter, the formation of so-called bulbilli, &c. occurs to- 

 gether with the former only in a small number of plants. We 

 must however make ourselves better acquainted with it. This 

 creation, for instance, does not take place always in such a way 

 as that the mother plant separates itself entirely from them, and 

 scatters them singly ; but it forms most frequently, before its in- 

 dividual death, a peculiar organ, which places the offspring in a 

 peculiar vital connexion with one another, and at the same 

 time serves as a reservoir for a certain quantity of nutritive sub- 

 stance, by which the first development of the young individuals 

 is facilitated. But in general this organ is merely a metamor- 

 phosis of some other single well-known one, the stem or the 

 root, or, as in the potatoe, the axillary buds ; and consequently, 

 in this case, no one has ever hesitated to speak of these things 

 as of mere parts of a plant, which continue to live as connecting 

 members between the younger individuals after the death of the 

 parent. A different course on the contrary has been taken, 

 when stem and root cotemporaneously, and therefore nearly 



