- ai 
The Vegetable Individual, in its relation to Species. 301 
in fact contended.* Botanists have often asserted that it is the 
individual} alone, which is reproduced by slips (branches, buds, 
tubercles etc. ), and their opinion coincides with this view. Still, 
those derived from seeds? The former take root, ramify, blos- 
*som, ripen their fruit and seeds, just as the latter do, so that ina 
physiological sense they are complete individuals. For exam- 
ple, let us cast a glance at the weeping-willow (Salix Babylonica). 
tis well known that this tree, which was originally brought 
from the banks of the Euphrates, is always propagated by slips; 
for with us it never bears seeds—not because our climate 1s unfa- 
vorable, but because in our gardens there is no fructifying male 
tree.§ According to Loudon (Arboret. Brit.), the weeping-wil- 
: low was sent to England in 1730, by a French merchaut named 
_. ¢Vernon. It was planted in Twickenham Park, whence it spread 
rapidly over England and the continent. The tree, from which 
the first slips that were brought to Europe were taken, was most 
probably a cultivated one itself, raised from a slip. However this 
may be, could the descent of all our weeping-willows be traced, 
1 would undoubtedly lead us back to a willow, a female willow, 
grown in its native covntry from a seed. And so, on this ac- 
count, we are to regard all the beautiful weeping-willows of our 
gardens and our cemeteries—and surely they are perfect trees— 
hot as individual stocks, but as the disjecta membra of a primary 
trunk, now hidden in mythical darkness! In other cases this pri- 
as _* Gallesio: Teoria della riproduzione Vegetale (1816),a work, which I am sorry t 
‘Say Thave not been able to consult myself. Huxley (upon Animal Individuality, in 
q _ the'‘Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist. June 1852), holding corresponding views, regards 
__ allthe animals which spring from an egg by al ,as dividual, or, 
as he expresses it, as a representative of the individual by successive coéxisting sep- 
arable forms ;-~regards as such, for example, the sum total of all the A phides, a 
duced in successive generations, by non-sexual increase, from the first “nurse a 
1 
xual reproduction as the criterion 
t f their view. 
Elem. 
as a nea * fae: af 3 " 
ina § m propagent, : 
v. p “pe S ceecanane? Si astichess to “ propagent,” cannot 
icher und Unger: Grundziige der Bot., p. 85, say, “ In these. 
buds drop off isa tru pagation 
radoxical; for how can we imagine 
e multiplied wi ies bei Juced? I have 
re multiplied without the spec r 
to show hat is here meant, by representing non-sexual propa- 
ation subordinate to the cycle of sexual reproduction (ct. Ver- 
ie th rieneed garde er can distinguish them, but certainly not 
t] tae is very canadkobint e.g.in Araucarie raised from 
Pa : dt atciding the disagreeable seed-down. For the same 
d, in China they cultivate the male tree only, 
