The Vegetable Individual, in its relation to Species. 309 
and J. Agardh.* These parts, it is true, have often been regarded 
as the elementary formst of plants, or their primary « individual- 
ized” bodies ;{ the attempts, however, to represent them as the 
true and real vegetable individuals are not numerous; and they 
astonish us by their daring rathgr than entice to imitation. 
Turpin, who commenced by considering plants to be composed 
of different kinds of individual cells, which he compared with 
various lower plants (especially the Algee-genera Protococecus and 
Conferva), afterwards expanded his views, so as to regard the cells 
themselves as individuals of a second rank; while he consid- 
1 ered the true primary individuals to be the granules of the cell- 
contents, from which, in his opinion, the cell (cell-wall) is gene 
by agglomeration. Mayer of Bonn, basing his theory u 
molecular motions, sannidiadh the smallest granules of the tial 
ik tents as individuals ssessing animal life (biospheres) which 
} build up plants for their dwellings. “Like hamadryads these 
Sensitive monads inhabit the secret halls of the ithe -palaces we 
| call ‘arr and a8 silently hold their dances and celebrate their 
~ Orgies,’ 
Diether than this we cannot go: if we did we.should have to 
ve specific vegetable life, and, instead of investigating its most 
4 minute spheres of formation, the visible cel s, vesicles, granules 
i Or Monads, turn to the spigiide individual of brute matter, so 
as to consider plants as phenomena of appellant and repellant, co- 
herent and incoherent atoms. If we must understand by an in- 
* J. Agard: ~ i Veg. Lead tenuissimis contexta (1852). Notwithstanding 
the im “can author’s new investigations, they still need a more searching 
Fer pation mien ts-directly contradict well-ascertained facts, e. g.: the di- 
rect transition o of | the bres from the outer to the inner layers of the cell-wall. e 
whole theo ory of the formation of cells by the uninterrupted growth of fibres cannot 
be admitted in view of the — independence of the formation of tbe cell-w: 
cee 
Bs 
So 
eg” 
eas 
oe 
® 
3 
& 
"B 
er 
1. 
" 
olec 
visible, Tilia it pre wah armas g goog ten ny Ce 
ions 
f Kiiteing : Phil mets i, p. 125, 129, does not regard ths cell as the elementary 
eS ts, but as complete d structure itself, ee ee 
ch he comprehen hhends under the name molecular tissue,” 
a says, preset in themselves many lower veda forms, Plants 
hys. der The cell is represented 
a eae ‘ bat nih es oa 1 fibres and granules within it 3 a 
: . y . 77 . = id ies, 
Sorte nombre dou (Mem. dt Monde, sv, 1827, p 805): “ Ai 
la membrane de Ia 
lomérations de ces derniers constituent les 
i sear crete rg et enfin, celles-ci achévent 
oe i ‘i . en os P. 49, Iam acquainted 
through Meyen’s Pflanzenphys., hys., 
Tee “ Individua.” 
