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CHAPTER XL 



REPRODUCTION IN PLANTS. 



HAVING treated at some length of the reproductive process 

 in animals, there remains little that need be said as to the 

 reproduction of plants. As amongst animals, plants exhibit 

 both sexual and non-sexual methods of reproduction, though 

 the peculiarities of vegetables render the latter much less con- 

 spicuous than in animals, and, indeed, usually lead to their 

 being completely overlooked. In many of the lower cellular 

 plants reproduction takes place by gemmation or fission, 

 which may be continuous or discontinuous, and the process 

 differs little from what may be observed in many of the 

 lower animals. In the higher plants, however, continuous 

 gemmation is universal, but it is so plainly a mere form of 

 growth that it is never regarded as being of a reproductive 

 nature. Nevertheless, from a philosophical point of view, 

 the gemmation by which a tree is produced may be in all 

 respects paralleled with that to which the origin of one of 

 the plant-like colonies of the Hydroid Zoophytes is due, if 

 we simply make due allowance for the differences which 

 subsist between animals and plants. 



Thus the leaves of the tree are truly " nutritive zooids," 

 produced by a process of continuous gemmation from the 

 primitive being which is developed from the ovum; and 

 they are concerned wholly with the nutrition of the organism, 



