REJUVENESCENCE IN NATURE. 105 



of the perennial trunk.* The parts of the flower again 

 are regarded partly as simple anaphyta t partly again as 

 composed of a number of anaphyta .^ 



When we gather all this together, we cannot wonder 

 that even an admirer of Schultz's doctrine of the Ana- 

 pltyton says, that it is a Proteus, which we cannot grasp, 

 and which everywhere slips away from us, yet lies at the 

 base of all actual shapes, j To those who test the new 

 system for themselves, in the living plant, it will certainly 

 be clear from Schultz's explanation, that this Proteus is 

 a mere thing of the imagination, existing neither by itself 

 nor in its combinations, which are forged out of actuali- 

 ties found in the most diverse sections of the vegetable 

 organism : sections partly existing as such, partly purely 

 imaginary. The correct perception that there exist in 

 the plant multifold phenomena of Rejuvenescence, re- 

 peated in diverse morphological regions, and subdivisions 

 ( Gliederungen} conditioned thereby, is completely reversed 

 by Schultz's system, in that all these perceptible sub- 

 divisions (not to consider the merely hypothetical) are 

 regarded as essentially like members of the plant, and 



*' Anaphytose; 41. 



f The flower is to be conceived only physiologically, and not morpholo- 

 gically ( c Anaphyt.,' p. xi), and yet its formation is explained from morpho- 

 logical elements, i. e. anaphyta (ibid., p. 62). Although composed like 

 the individual parts of the plant, that is, the parts of the vegetable 

 " stock," of anaphyta, the parts of the flower are said to possess only an 

 apparent and no real similarity to these, and to be essentially different from 

 them (p. 67). Since the parts of the flower, as anaphyta, are explained, at 

 the same time, like the individual parts of the plant, as independent indi- 

 viduals (p. 92), and since the whole plant is said to repeat itself, with all 

 its essential functions, in each anaphyton, it is impossible to see, from 

 Schultz's doctrine, whence comes the asserted essential difference of the 

 anaphyta of the same plant. Schultz's own distinction, namely, the anaphyta 

 of the vegetable " stock," as mere individual (!) (asexual) individuals, and 

 the anaphyta of the flower (enanaphyta) as sexual individuals, cannot be 

 regarded as essential, and removing all real similarity, since, on the one 

 hand, the parts of the flower must still have an individual existence, and, on 

 the other hand, the anaphyta of the vegetable "stock" must_ have ascribed 

 to them, from the production of new anaphyta, not merely individual existence, 

 but power of propagation. Hence Schultz's opposition to Metamorphosis 

 appears wholly groundless on this side. 



\ Vide 'Botanische Zeitung,' 1843, p. 741 



