232 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



kingdom in Section XIII. ; and to these must be added 

 the buds and bulbs, which constitute the viviparous 

 offspring of vegetation. The former I suppose to be 

 beholden to a single living filament for their seminal 

 or amatorial procreation; and the latter to the same 

 cause for their lateral or branching generation, which 

 they possess in common with the polypus, tasnia, and 

 volvox, and the simplicity of which is an argument in 

 favour of the similarity of its cause. 



" Linnseus supposes, in the introduction to his 

 natural orders, that very few vegetables were at first 

 created, and that their numbers were increased by 

 their intermarriages, and adds, ' Suaderet hsec Creatoris 

 leges a simplicibus ad composita.' Many other changes 

 appear to have arisen in them by their perpetual con* 

 test for light and air above ground, and for food or 

 moisture beneath the soil. As noted in the ' Botanic 

 Garden,' Part II., note on Cuscuta. Other changes of 

 vegetables from climate or other causes are remarked 

 in the note on Curcuma in the same work. From 

 these one might be led to imagine that each plant at 

 first consisted of a single bulb or flower to each root, 

 as the gentianella and daisy, and that in the contest for 

 air and light, new buds grew on the old decaying flower- 

 stem, shooting down their elongated roots to the ground, 

 and that in process of ages tall trees were thus formed, 

 and an individual bulb became a swarm of vegetables. 

 Other plants which in this contest for light and air 

 were too slender to rise by their own strength, learned 

 by degrees to adhere to their neighbours, either by 

 putting forth roots like the ivy, or by tendrils like the 



