214 MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 



It will be useful to glance back over the various minor 

 inferences arrived at, and contemplate them in their ensem- 

 ble from these higher points of view. 



263. That process of integration which every plant dis- 

 plays during its life, we found reason to think has gone on 

 during the life of the vegetal kingdom as a whole. Proto- 

 plasm into cells, cells into folia, folia into axes, axes into 

 branched combinations such, in brief, are the stages passed 

 through by every shrub ; and such appear to have been the 

 stages through which plants of successively-higher kinds 

 have been evolved from lower kinds. Even among certain 

 groups of plants now existing, we find aggregates of the first 

 order passing through various gradations into aggregates of 

 the second order here forming small, incoherent, indefinite 

 assemblages, and there forming large, definite, coherent 

 fronds. Similar transitions are traceable through which 

 these integrated aggregates of the second order pass into 

 aggregates of the third order : in one species the unions of 

 parent-fronds with the fronds that bud out from them, being 

 temporary, and in another species such unions being longer 

 continued ; until, in species still higher, by a gemmation 

 that is habitual and regular, there is produced a definitely- 

 integrated aggregate of the third order an axis bearing 

 fronds or leaves. And even between this type and a type 

 further compounded, a link occurs in the plants which cast 

 off, in the shape of bulbils, some of the young axes they 

 produce. As among plants, so among animals. A 



like spontaneous fission of cells ends here in separation, there 

 in partial aggregation, while elsewhere, by closer combina- 

 tion of the multiplying units, there arises a coherent and 

 tolerably definite individual of the second order. By the 

 budding of individuals of the second order, there are in some 

 cases produced other separate individuals like them ; in some 

 cases temporary aggregates of such like individuals ; and in 

 other cases permanent aggregates of them : certain of which 



