PHYTOGENY. 227 



1152. Leaflets occurring in pairs, or equally pinnated, 

 are arrests of development. 



1153. The even number or the symmetrical form is 

 unnatural in the vegetable kingdom. 



1154. The leaves are, like the young bark, and thus 

 the whole trunk of the plant, green, because the vegetable 

 kingdom represents the lower totality of the earth, the 

 planet, whose synthesis is the water. 



1155. From the same cause, the chief colour of the 

 animal kingdom is red, the colour of fire. Thus, plant 

 is to animal, as green is to red. 



1156. The division of leaves passes also parallel to 

 the stages of rank in plants. Cellular leaves are the 

 scales of mosses and ferns; vascular leaves, the long 

 riband-like leaves of Monocotyledons ; tracheal leaves 

 the reticular leaf of Dicotyledons. The cortical leaf is 

 the sheath ; the liber leaf is probably the fat leaf; the 

 wood leaf the acicular leaf. The radical leaf is the un- 

 divided reticular leaf ; the stalk-leaf the free or ragged 

 reticular leaf ; the perfect leaf the pinnate. The bracteal 

 leaves repeat all forms in the thyrsus, since they are floral 

 leaves. 



1157. The accessory leaves or stipules are none other 

 than the remnant of the sheath-formation, out of which 

 all the leaves, and therefore the wings of the leaf-petioles 

 or phyllodia, have issued forth. 



1158. The thyrsus has also its series of leaves; the 

 scale-like or radical leaf is involucre and bractea; the 

 vascular or spathe-leaf is calyx ; the tracheal or reticular 

 leaf is corolla. 



1159. The vegetable trunk, namely, root, stalk, and 

 leaf, is a perfect organism, which can exercise all the 

 functions which belong to its individual life. If it there- 

 fore produces anything, that can be nothing new, but 

 only itself repeated. This repetition of itself is called 

 propagation. The organs of propagation are thus none 

 other than a repetition of the organs of the vegetable 

 trunk. The plant thereby steps forth out of its indivi- 

 duality into the province of the genus. 



