CHAPTER VI. 



INDIVIDUALITY. 



72. WHAT is an individual ? is a question which many 

 readers will think it easy to answer. Yet it is a question 

 that has led to much controversy among Zoologists and 

 Botanists, and no quite satisfactory reply to it seems possible. 

 As applied to a man, or to any one of the higher animals, 

 which are all sharply-defined and independent, the word in 

 dividual has a clear meaning: though even here, when we 

 turn from average cases to exceptional cases as a calf with 

 two heads and two pairs of fore-limbs we find ourselves in 

 doubt whether to predicate one individuality or two. But 

 when we extend our range of observation to the organic world 

 at large, we find that difficulties allied to this exceptional 

 one meets us everywhere under every variety of form. 



Each uniaxial plant may perhaps fairly be regarded as a 

 distinct individual; though there are botanists who do not 

 make even this admission. What, however, are we to say of 

 a multiaxial plant? It is, indeed, usual to speak of a tree 

 with its many branches and shoots as singular; but strong 

 reasons may be urged for considering it as plural. Every 

 one of its axes has a more or less independent life, and when 

 cut off and planted may grow into the likeness of its parent; 

 or, by grafting and budding, parts of this tree may be 

 developed upon another tree, and there manifest their 

 specific peculiarities. Shall we regard all the growing axes 

 thus resulting from slips and grafts and buds, as parts of one 

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