316 TAXONOMY. 



distinction between beings and things ; but, although the tend- 

 ency to individuation begins with life itself, it is completely 

 realized only in the higher animals. 



622. In plants, as also in some of the lower animals, individu- 

 ality is merged in community. No plant (except one reduced 

 to the simplicity of a single cell, of circumscribed growth, and 

 without organs) is an individual in the sense that a man or a 

 dog is. (16, 156.) The herb, shrub, and tree are neither 

 indivisible nor of definite limitation. Whether their successive 

 growths are to remain parts of the previous plant, or to be inde- 

 pendent plants, depends upon circumstances ; and there is no 

 known limit to budding propagation. 



623. There is, however, a kind of social or corporate indi- 

 viduality in those animals, or communities (whichever we call 

 them) of the lower grade which are multiplied by buds or off- 

 shoots as well as by ova, and in which the offspring remains, or 

 may remain, organically connected with the stock. The poly- 

 pidom or polyparium commonly has a certain limitation and a 

 definite form ; and certain polyps may become organs with 

 special functions subordinate to the common weal. This is 

 more largely true in the vegetable kingdom. So that for de- 

 scriptive purposes, and in a just although somewhat loose sense, 

 the herb, shrub, or tree is taken as an individual. But only 

 while it forms one connected body. Offshoots when separately 

 established are equally individuals in this sense. 



624. What it is in plants which philosophically answers to the 

 individual in the higher animals is another question, to which 

 various answers have been given. 1 Some insist that the whole 

 vegetative product of one seed makes one individual, whether 

 connected or separated (as may happen) into a million of plants. 

 But a common and less strained view restricts the individual 

 to such product only while organically united. Others (of 

 which Thouars at the beginning and Braun at the middle of the 

 present century are leading examples) take each axis or shoot 

 with its foliage to represent the individual, of which the leaves 

 and their homologues are organs, the branches being usually 

 implanted upon the parent axis as this is implanted in the soil, 

 but also equally capable of producing roots by which they may 

 make their own connection with the soil. Still others, on pre- 



1 For the history of opinion upon and a full presentation of this topic, 

 see Alexander Braun's Memoir (originally published in the Abhandl. Akad. 

 Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1863), Das Individuum der Pflanze, &c., and a 

 translation by C. F. Stone in Amer. Jour. Sci. ser. 2, xix. xx. 1855. 



