REPRODUCTION OF PLANTS. 533 



duces the species ; the bud the individual." The instruction of our 

 early days in the Latin and Greek languages has taught us that the 

 German philosophers understand nothing less than their own mother- 

 tongue ; and this is seen in this case. The organic increase of an indi- 

 vidual is termed growth. When by an organic process, conducted under 

 given conditions, a new individual arises from the old one, the plant has 

 been reproduced, or propagated. Species is an idea which, in the 

 abstract, cannot propagate or be propagated, reproduce or be reproduced. 

 If through reproduction one individual existence arises out of another, 

 thus the idea of species is applied explanatorily, because the concrete 

 objects are present that fall within its sphere. Link imagined that he 

 was improving upon the above, when he said, " The seed continues the 

 species, and the bud the individual." * I cannot conceive of the Creator 

 as a journalist, who issues his works leaf by leaf in continuation. Science 

 regards a tree as an aggregate of many individuals, a kind of polyp- 

 stock ; life, proceeding upon another distinctive character, calls it an 

 individual : but neither science nor life as -nyVo^h of an individual. I 

 imagine that any person of sound mind would smile if any one were to 

 regard the 2000 poplars of a German chaussee a mile in length as a 

 continuous individual ; and still less would it be admitted, that a one- 

 year-old span-long shoot of a weeping willow was essentially aeon 

 tinuation of an old individual, who, in his rapid departure from the East, 

 left his youth lying on the border of the Euphrates, where long ago it 

 died and was decomposed, whilst its commencing manhood was cherished 

 by Alexander Popef, and many years since was hewn down and cast 

 into the fire. The above facts, which the want of observation and a 

 knowledge of the mother-tongue have rendered so confused, are, that 

 from buds originate individuals, which frequently resemble the parent 

 plants in more characters than those which originate with the embryo. 

 This fact, but which in no way constitutes an accurate distinction (as 

 seen in the subordinate characters of our common garden vegetables, 

 cabbages, peas, &c., which are produced from seed), bears very naturally 

 on the species produced generally by organic reproduction. Reproduc- 

 tion is nothing else than the passing over of the specific formative 

 tendency of one individual to a new one ; and where the species is not 

 maintained, there no reproduction can take place. But the circumstances 

 under which reproduction takes place determine whether the specific 

 formative energy shall produce a larger or smaller number of characters ; 

 as a form in a condition of development, whether it consists in external 

 shape or internal process, must become more like the earlier form, the 

 longer and more exclusively its origin and development depend upon 

 those circumstances which produced and developed the first form. 

 Regular reproduction, and reproduction through single cells, consist in 

 the fact, that an organic embryo separates itself perfectly from the mass 

 of the plant and its continuity, and developes itself out of itself, so that 

 the influence which the parent plant exerts, even though it be definite 

 and assimilative, is yet always an external one, and is modified by the 

 peculiar vital power of the reproductive cell. In propagation by division 

 and bud-formation, on the other hand, the new individual, up to the 



* Elem. Phil. Bot. ed. 2. vol. i. p. 133. 



f All our weeping willows in Europe have proceeded from a branch, which formed 

 part of a wicker basket, which was sent from Smyrna to the poet Fope, and which he 

 planted, as it showed S'I<<;HS of life. 



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