DEATH OF THE ENTIRE PLANT. 537 



continues to live. This living part then maintains in a peculiar 

 manner a union amongst the new individuals (single plants), which 

 are produced by formation of buds from the first individual. This 

 is the condition of all perennial plants with root-stocks and stems. 

 Perfectly simple plants, which entirely die after having completed 

 their regular development, are extremely few. Compound plants 

 have no determinate conclusion to their life which can be called 

 death in the above sense of the word. 



I have frequently pointed out in this book how irrelevant and useless all 

 analogies between the animal and vegetable kingdoms are, so soon as we 

 regard them without prejudice, and compare them, with a profound know- 

 ledge of the nature of each. This is seen in a remarkable manner in the 

 subject of the foregoing paragraph. Not a hundredth part of the vege- 

 table kingdom (the annual and biennial plants) afford the possibility of 

 any comparison between the death of plants and the majority of animals. 

 Not a thousandth part of the animal kingdom (the compound polyps) 

 permits of an analogy with the remaining plants*; and our knowledge 

 of the history of the development of these animals is most defective. 

 The life of the individual animal is dependant, both for its stimulus and 

 maintenance, in a manifold manner, upon the life of the planets [meteor- 

 ological phenomena]. But whilst external nature supports the life of 

 the animal on the one side, yet every act of maintenance is attended with 

 a wearing and resistance which gradually culminates till the maintaining 

 power is overcome, and death takes place. The conditions of death lie 

 in the organism itself of the animal. The organic elements united to an 

 independent individuality have no life for themselves, only so long as 

 they serve for the life of the entire animal, and the specific determinate 

 equilibrium of their chemical nature and physical power are maintained. 

 The destruction of this equilibrium by external nature, however, is 

 always opposed by a specific determinate vis inertice. When the event 

 occurs which produces a perfect destruction of this equilibrium, then the 

 death of the animal takes place ; at the same time, all the organic ele- 

 ments of which it is composed fall under the influence of death and de- 

 composition. 



It is not so with the plant. In it each elementary organ has its own 

 independent life, and dies for itself alone, and the entire plant consists of 

 a morphological and not a physiological union of elements. Individual 

 cells may die, although they give the figure of the entire plant, and yet a 

 portion of the whole remain living ; the entire plant may die, that is, the 

 specific form in which the cells are arranged may be abolished, and yet 

 the life of the elementary organs continue, and even be in a condition to 

 produce again new individuals of the same species. The idea of the 

 whole plant, as I have in so many places pointed out, consists in a speci- 

 fically determinate process of development. Where this produces such 

 indeterminate forms as Algce, Lichens, Fungi, we cannot speak of the 

 death of the entire plant, because every individual part represents the 

 whole plant, and is capable of growth according to the same type. We 



* An interesting relation between the morphology of plants and certain zoophytes 

 was established by Professor Edward Forbes, in a Paper read at the meeting of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1 844, entitled, " On the Mor- 

 phology of the Reproductive System of Surtularian Zoophytes, and its analogy with that 

 of Flowering Plants." TRANS. 



