182 The Vegetable Individual in its relation to Species. 
uals increase in importance, until they reach their most perfect 
independence in Man. Hence, if we would appreciate them justly 
in the lower departments, in which their character is less defin- 
ite, we must try to comprehend the less perfect structures by 
starting from the more perfect ones: to appreciate vegetable in- 
dividuals we must start from a comparison of animal individuals. 
From this point of view we perceive at once that the cell can- 
not be regarded as the proper individual in plants, otherwise it 
would have to be considered in the same manner in animals. 
Cell-formation is a property common to plants and animals: but 
in animals it appears far more obviously as a subordinate element 
in the organization of the whole body, than it does in plants; 
since the animal cell, in most cases, is not so independent, nor s0 
determinate, nor so permanently isolated as the vegetable cell. 
or this reason, too, it is rarer to find thé animal cell considered 
perhaps, be interpreted in the same sense. The “stories” of the 
axes, the internodes with their leaves, might claim to be com- 
pared with the animal individual with more justice than the cell, 
especially if leaf-formation really took place as the defenders of 
such doctrines have represented: that is, if every successive le 
were produced as a new structure out of the old one (out of is 
base which becomes the internode), and if the whole stem wele 
thus merely a concatenation of leaves shooting out of and grow 
ing above each other. But this is not so; the rudiment of the 
stem as an uninterrupted growth (“continuance”) is form be- 
Jore the leaves, while the latter, emerging as developments of the 
upper surface of the stem, are evidently members dependent upon 
and belonging to the axis, and forming with it one whole. Hence 
the structure of the internodes may be more aptly compared with 
the lateral structure of the animal body, and that of the leaves 
with its terminal structure. Thus we arrive at the shoot; 
we must investigate the question, whether it should be considered 
as what corresponds best with the animal individual, or whe 
we must ascend still farther, up to the whole plant-stock. 
The Shoot as the Vegetable Individual. 
The first and most common view is that which considers the 
individual in plants, as in animals, to be merely each single Sp& 
cimen, i.e., each representative of the species which appears 
be one whole from the connexion of its parts. ‘To some extent 
Et Get are ae ee eee ea a 
