REJUVENESCENCE IN NATURE. 51 



prevails in the formation of sprouts in plants, as it does 

 everywhere in nature, yet all formation of sprouts, the 

 inessential no less than the essential, possesses a deter- 

 minate relation to the maintenance and progressive de- 

 velopment of the plant. From the consideration of the 

 sprouts as individuals, the vegetable " stock" must appear 

 to us as the living trunk of a family, rejuvenised and in- 

 creased according to determinate laws of propagation, 

 the differently gifted members of which family we have 

 endeavoured in the foregoing, though only in mere 

 indications, to represent, as arranged according to descent 

 and collateral relation, in their either closer (direct) or 

 looser (indirect) relation to the destination of the whole.* 

 And thus may the import of sprout-formation become 

 clear, as a subordinate propagation, subserving the indi- 

 vidual destination in its wider sense. The undeniable 

 interweaving of propagation and development within this 

 circle, may at the same time form an acceptable guide to 

 the destination of the individual in the larger circle of the 

 species, as well as that of this again in the totality of the 

 series of organic creation,! which has already been re- 

 ferred to in the Introduction. 



II. LEAF-FORMATION. 



From the Rejuvenescences which the plant experiences 

 through formation of sprouts, by which the subject (or 

 theme) of the plant is many times repeated and variously 

 distributed on the "stock," in subordinate individual 



* The study of sprouts is the broadest and fairest field in Morphology, but 

 as yet, unfortunately, the least cultivated. What C. Schimper long since 

 accomplished in this department, but has not yet published, I have already 

 mentioned in a public lecture on " the Vegetable Individual," which I shall 

 print after this discourse. The phenomenon of the essential and necessary 

 succession of sprouts long known in the vegetable kingdom, agrees com- 

 pletely with that occurring in the animal kingdom, the so-called alternation 

 of generations, brought into its true position chiefly by Sars and Steenstrup. 

 I have shown this by a detailed comparison in the above-mentioned lecture. 



f Victor Carus has given important hints upon the analogy of the alter- 

 nation of generations with the succession in the series of organic beings, 

 in his before-mentioned Essay 'Zur Naheren Kenntniss des Generations 

 wechsels,' p. 54. 



