236 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



breaks up into as many organisms as there 

 are organs ; even the single cell has that 

 power in certain Plants (possibly in all, if the 

 right conditions be found). 



Such is the asexual propagation of the veg- 

 etal individual, whereby the one parent is sim- 

 ply repeated in its progeny; the same body 

 reproduces itself indefinitely, a kind of quan- 

 titative repetition of the one unit. Still even 

 in this seemingly uniform reproduction sur- 

 prising variations may occur and have been 

 recorded, indicating that also in the vegetal 

 body far-off ancestral traits can lie dormant 

 till favorable conditions may cause it again to 

 spring forth, to the surprise of the botanist. 

 DeVries maintained that vegetal variation 

 was not the slow movement which Darwin so 

 strongly emphasized but might be sudden and 

 catastrophic, producing a new species at a 

 single leap. Still asexual generation is in 

 gieneral, repetitive of the parental form which 

 it originates, and monotypal (hence the use 

 of the word mono genetic}. But the sexual 

 dualism is also found in Plant-life. 



There is an old discussion concerning the 

 sexuality of Plants, which was at one time 

 questioned. Then again this was accepted, 

 but regarded as quite superfluous, since its 

 place could be filled by so many substitutes. 

 But hybridisation, especially the experiments 



