340 Dr. A.Braim on the Vegetable Individual-. 



hence to be ranked as equal to it in importance, i. e. equally 

 to be viewed as particular individuals, and with as much reason 

 as in zoology we concede individuality to the branches of the 

 coral-stock (polypidom), which are now universally acknow- 

 ledged to be individuals, and which offer an analogy of decisive 

 importance for ascertaining the nature of the branch in vege- 

 tables. In view of this analogy, Ehrenberg regarded plants as 

 aggregations of individuals*. 



We can now turn back, and apply what has been shown to 

 be the case in the annual herb, to the shrub and the tree, each 

 of whose annual generations now appears, more distinctly than 

 before, to be, in their peculiar connexion, not one individual, but 

 a world of individuals developing in the same period of vegeta- 

 tion and upon the same stem. To this intent many of the early 

 botanists have expressed themselves, as I stated in the introduc- 

 tion. Thus, B. Batsch, e.g., says of branches, that they shoot 

 forth from the stem '^ as if they were so many plants rooted in 

 itt ;'^ and Goethe J : " Lateral branches may be regarded as par- 

 ticular plantlets which are rooted upon the maternal stem, just 

 as this stem is upon the earth.'^ Among moderns, linger, at 

 the close of his investigations into dicotyledonous stems, says, 

 " . . . . Buds and the branches they devclope are individual plants, 

 which live by preying upon the maternal stcm§." Similar 

 expressions are used by Schleiden jj ; they are most definite in 



* Abh. (1. Akad. 1835, p. 247- " . . . . Hence a poljp-stock is a mass of 

 animals. We have no satisfactory comprehensive expression for oiu' idea 

 of a plant. What an individual is, remains still unknoAvn ; most of them 

 are evidently aggregates of individuals which may be compared with coral- 

 stocks." The origin of coral-stocks is minutely described by Ehrenberg 

 in the Abhandl. for 1832, where he makes the following remarks : — "The 

 coral structure is neither a mere structure composed of many animals 

 arbitrarily conjoined, as Ellis supposed; nor one single animal with many 

 heads, or with simple furcations, as Cavolini maintained ; nor a vegetable 

 stem with animal flowers, as Linnaeus expressed it; it is a body of 

 families, a liv'mij tree of consanguinity ; the single animals belonging to it, 

 and continually developing upon the [)rimary ancestor, are entirely iso- 

 lated within themselves, and capable of complete independence, although 

 unal)le to achieve it." 



t Bot. fiir Erauenzimmcr, pp. 15, U>. 



X Versuch d. Metam. d. PH. zu erkliircn, p. 5!). The words "just as" 

 in the passage quoted imply too much, and remind us of Uu Petit-Thouars' 

 unfounded doctrine of the ibrmation of the woody layers of the stem by the 

 'roots' of the buds which penetrate it. 



§ Ueber d. Ban u. Wachsthum des Dicotyledonenstannncs, p. 1/7. 

 Here, too, "preying " is too strong a term. 



II Grundz. ii. p. 4. "New identical individuals develope upon the ma- 

 ternal stem by continuing the growth," &c. Here the exi)ression " con- 

 tinuing the growth" is improjier, for the shoot does not " continue " the 

 growth at all, but is a new growth from a new rudiment. 



i 



