82 THE MORPHOLOGY 



(Study of motion or Physiology of plants). Have we 

 then exhausted the whole existence of the plant? By no 

 means ; and, in fact, so far from it, that it is conceivable 

 that all these substances, all their motions (so far as they 

 relate to chemical union and separation) might be imitated 

 in the retorts and crucibles of our laboratories, without any 

 phenomenon occurring to remind us in the most distant 

 manner of a plant. From sugar, gum or vegetable jelly is 

 formed cellulose ; but cellulose is not as yet a cell. This 

 cell-formation, consequently the shaping, first changes the 

 substances into vegetable organisms. All existing plants 

 are composed of cells of the same kind, but the different 

 plants are distinguished from one another by the contour, 

 the design according to which the cells are united together. 

 Whether it arises from the essential nature of the cir- 

 cumstances or not, we cannot say, but, at least so far 

 as appearance goes, the production of shape is so prominent 

 a point in the Natural History of Plants, that all the rest 

 has often been forgotten for its sake ; and thus the study of 

 form, or Morphology, becomes in any case the most 

 important branch of teaching in all Botany. But it would 

 be a great mistake to suppose that Morphology is merely a 

 meagre enunciation and description of forms. It is also a 

 scientific question : it has also to seek for the knowledge of 

 laws, and must, at least as a preliminary step, arrange the 

 multitude of appearances under primary points of view, 

 place them according to rule and exception, and so 

 gradually approach nearer to the discovery of the actual 

 laws of Nature. 



The notion of such a regulation of the shapes of plants, 

 was first expressed by Go the, in his idea of a typical plant, 

 whereby he signified an ideal plant, the realization of which, 

 as it were, Nature had proposed to herself, and which she 



