306 The Vegetable Individual, in its relation to Species. 
can be disentangled and resolved into separate individuals and 
why the same independence and the same rank should not be 
allowed to the parts of the vascular bundles. And how shall 
we regard the lower plants, which have no fibres at all? If 
our conclusions. are to anything more than mere arbitrary 
Sa AIORS: we must go still farther; and we ~" find no 
as it is of sexual at The cell has a better right to 
be considered as the vegetable individual than any other subor- 
dinate member of the plant; when connected with other cells 
it still continues to be an ’ independent sphere of formation, 
sharply defined and, in youth at least, completely isolated.t Be- 
fore the universal law of cell-formation was known, and before 
botanists had succeeded in reducing all the elementary organs of 
view, the cell is the rent individual. °$ 
he most reliable authorities have agreed that new cells can 
never be formed externally to, but only within, other cells al- 
ready formed,{ so that cell-multiplication must be regarded as a 
propagation, while all the cells of the mature plant must be re- 
garded as the progeny of the first embryonic cell. Besides, each 
and every plant is at first a cell; and there are single-celled plants 
in the strictest sense of the term, in which the first formation 
of new cells is that destined to reproduction ; i. e.: the germina- 
ting cells or spores.** Again, there are other plants i in which the 
cell-generations contained between the first generation (which 
Earlier investigations into the origin of shape buds had — sz Brora 
that, in its phe: tion, each new shoot arises from a single cell. The a 
proof of this fact, was given Re Ho ae Se pin ate eh Unters chung 
der Coniferen, p. 94), in Hquisetum. The propagating cells on the foliage an an eigesof of 
the leaves of liverwort, which develop into new plants, ha ve long 
seh _ a e Cryptogamize belong here, as they are cells originating sa ae ane 
EP Pollen zelle, and the embryonic ned meee germinating cells,—as well as those 
of the archegonium of the on rC 
t Malpighi himself (Ana m. Plant, my 5) e calls cells utriculi, or caceuli, though 
i naire ae wood ‘and ig t-cells as “ fibre,” the vascular one as “fistula” 
and the cells containing m p as “va sa specialia.” As early as 1806, a 
mer’s rile ili, ec 439), ma expressed himself very ae? = in igieab> 
lated positr and the independence of cells: “ Quaevis tit ogapon rece: 
: g: dniiins, Codiolium. eae e er 
mead ae natio 
