III.] THE ANIMAL AND THE PLANT. 83 



can multiply is by a union of sexes. The plant, on the 

 contrary, has no perfect ^or simple autonomy. It has no 

 definite or pre -determined proximate span of life, except 

 in those instances when it is annual or biennial, and 

 here duration is an evident adaptation to environment. 

 (See page 45.) The plant frequently dies as the result 

 of decay. It has not a definite number of parts or 

 members and each part of the plant may perform a 

 function for itself, and the part may be useful to the 

 remainder of the plant or it may not. One part is like 

 what all other parts are or may be. If one portion is 

 removed the plant may not be injured; in fact, the plant 

 may be distinctly benefited. And the severed portion 

 may not only have the power of reproducing itself, but 

 it may even reproduce an organism like that from which 

 it came. In other words, plants multiply both with and 

 without sex. Potentially, every node and internode of 

 the plant is an individual, for it possesses the power, 

 when removed and properly eared for, of expanding 

 into what we call a plant, and of perfecting flowers and 

 seeds and of multiplying its kind. 



Many of the lower animals possess the same phe- 

 nomena of recrescence or multiple individuality that 

 plants do, and Eimer has insisted that the animal is not 

 "a complete, distinctly -defined unity." His position is 

 certainly well taken, but the argument in this paper, as 

 I have already stated, is drawn from a comparison of 

 higher animals with higher plants. If the two king- 

 doms are similar in their lower strata, they are dissimilar 

 in their upper strata, and this divergence of individu- 

 ality in the two phyla represents an actual truth. 



Those of you who are botanists now recall the con- 

 tention of Gaudichaud concerning the plant unit or 



