PLANT-LIFE FORMATION. 



is relatively external; while that of the Ani- 

 mal's organs is internal in comparison; mu- 

 tual co-operation of parts is not written so 

 indelibly on the limbs of the tree as on the 

 limbs of the horse. The life of the Plant re- 

 mains, therefore, a kind of child-life with its 

 rooted attachment to its mother; it never out- 

 grows infancy, for the tall Sequoia of many 

 hundreds of years ever remains a baby at 

 the breast. 



Still the Plant is alive, and has the uni- 

 versal process of all Life, which process be- 

 comes an emphatic ground of the unity and 

 the organization of the present stage of the 

 Biocosmos (the Particularized). As already 

 indicated, Plant-life will show the three 

 phases of all vital activity: Formation, As- 

 similation, and Generation. 



I. THE FORMATIVE PROCESS OF PLANT-LIFE. 

 The Plant has an external Form which char- 

 acterizes it ; everybody soon learns to distin- 

 guish it from all other objects, even if in 

 micro-organisms it is often difficult for the 

 trained observer to tell a Plant from an Ani- 

 mal. Granted that there is a field in which 

 the two are hardly yet differentiated, the de- 

 veloped or normal Plant-form is not ambig- 

 uous, though exceedingly varied. The orig- 

 inative type has many manifestations, all of 

 which are different. No two Plant-forms of 



