56 



principle. Finally, we have the energies of the successive 

 generations of the compound plant exhausted in the per- 

 fection of the female individual, the pistillum, with its 

 ovarian base : the true nature of which is manifested by 

 its common return to the more archetypal form of petal or 

 leaf in those over-nourished plants that produce double 

 flowers, e.g. the Ranunculuses, Saxifrages and Wall-flowers. 



The ovule is perfected in the part called ' ovary/ forming 

 the base of the female individual plant. By the passage of 

 the pollen-tube to the foramen of the ovule, as traced by 

 Brown in the Orchids and Asclepiads, impregnation results, 

 and various beautiful contrivances exist for conveying the 

 impregnated seed to a distance, where it may lay the foun- 

 dation of a new series of united gemmiparous individuals. 



I am quite sensible that the composite plant or the com- 

 posite zoophyte, and the phenomena of their development, 

 may be explained agreeably with ordinary ideas and com- 

 mon belief in regard to trees ; viz. that the leaves are parts 

 of a whole, that they are the respiratory organs of the tree, 

 and the polypes the digestive organs of an individual com- 

 pound organism. And this explanation agrees with the 

 functions performed by the variously modified individuals 

 in relation to the association ; just as the several members 

 of a regiment or a corporation constitute one organized 

 whole. The question, however, is, whether the tree repre- 

 sents such a whole, or is equivalent to one of the or- 

 ganized individual members; whether the leaf and the 

 stamen may not answer rather to different individuals of 

 the 'body corporate/ than to the lung or the testis of 

 any single individual. Unquestionably our choice of ex- 

 planations ought to be governed by the results of the 

 most extended and accurate analogies. Our first (and 

 the common) notion of a tree and a coralline, as being 

 respectively individual organisms, derives seeming sup- 

 port from the fact that in each species of composite plants 

 and animals the aggregate of individuals assumes a de- 



