236 Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual. 



.complements. The regular relations here brought to view will 

 form the principal subject of the present investigation. But we 

 must first carefully determine the sphere of the individual. The 

 individual shall not and may not be considered by itself: it must 

 be viewed in the successive generations to which it belongs. 

 This succession may be similar or dissimilar, simple or compli- 

 cated by divisions, continuous or graduated by cyclical changes. 

 It is by this that the phgenomena of fissiparous and alternate 

 generation may be explained. It is only by a consideration of 

 these relations that the nature of the individual itself, as a sub- 

 ordinate sphere of the species^ development, can be rightly com- 

 prehended, and that the single individuals in their worth and 

 importance, in their relations to each other and to the whole 

 realized cycle of the species, can be understood. 



Preliminary Remarks on Vegetable Individuality : different views 

 in regard to it. 



We must determine what constitutes the vegetable individual, 

 before we can investigate its relations to the whole cycle of ge- 

 neration of the species. But it is this determination itself which 

 presents so many difficulties ; and these difficulties become the 

 greater, the further we push our investigations. Individuality in 

 plants seems as obscure and ambiguous, as in animals (at least 

 in their higher orders) it appears clear and simple ; so that, as 

 Steinheil remarks, it escapes us just when we are upon the point 

 of seizing it*; and investigators might even conclude that we 

 can realize no other individuality than that which is manifested 

 in the totality of the species. The first obstacle to our compre- 

 hending the vegetable individual as a single sphere of conforma- 

 tion, as a morphological whole, is the disconnected and separate 

 character which obtains in the most heterogeneous modifications 

 of vegetable organisms. For nowhere in the vegetable kingdom 

 do we perceive that indissoluble connexion, and those pervading 

 reciprocal functions, which in the animal kingdom we are accus- 

 tomed to associate with the idea of an individual organism. 

 Nevertheless, by starting from a comparison with animals we 

 get an apposite point of departure for a comprehension of the 

 plant's individuality. Among the higher animals, the individual 

 appears as a member of a race produced by sexual generation ; 

 and this very test may be applied to plants, except in the very 

 lowest forms, to which sexual generation docs not apply at all, 



* " Dans chacun de ces organes nous nous croyons au premier aspect sur 

 le point de saisir I'individualite normale, et partout elle nous echappe." 

 Steinheil, De I'individualite vegetale (1836), p. 9. 



