62 The Vegetable Individual in its relation to Species. 
manifest its life in a series of successive formations, that it 
shall put forth its leaves, flowers and fruit by successive steps; 
and yet there are plants which produce no leaves and no fruit 
(the Cryptogamia); again, there are others which hasten on to 
form flower and fruit with various intermissions of the regular — 
steps, as is especially the case with the ugly parasites destitute of — 
that green foliage which elsewhere is so characteristic a product 
of the vegetable world.* One of these (the Hydnora,t which preys 
upon the root of the South African Huphorbie) seems eutirely 
devoid of all the foliage which is usually formed before the flower. 
Hence, therefore, in general we cannot necessarily regard indi- 
viduals as perfect representatives of the specific idea, and hence, 
too, we cannot regard them as representations invariably ideuti- 
cal in their realizations. Individuals appear rather as living at- 
tempts, by which the Idea is more or less attained, and is thus 
realized with various modifications. From this point of view 
even the differences in individuals, as pointed out by the doctrine 
of shoots, within the limits of vegetable species will no longer 
surprise us; on the contrary it will hs to us a deeper insight 
into that independence presented to us even in the life of nature, 
in the realization of the internal problems of the creation. 
But here, too, as is so variously the case in nature, the regula- 
tive law is ‘admirably united to the free configuration; for what 
gives a peculiar interest to the differences among shoots in the 
same species is the regular reciprocal relation among the shoots, 
as they reciprocally complete each other by their very one-sided- 
ness, and thus form a higher whole. In this respect the qualita- 
tive difference of shoots bears a certain relation to their “and 
species, propagation taking the place of individual development. 
A second individual takes up the thread of reproduction which 
the preceding one was unable to carry any farther. Thus, what 
we are accustomed to see elsewhere attained in the individual, is 
mined cycle,—in other words, where the single shoot is ineapa- 
le, a determinate succession ‘of shoot-series arises to bring the 
tha posamn Fagg mow omorium, Bo of which agree in 
Lequm 
whether is mere or a real parasite. “ Cf. 
licher en, plant, p. 16, pe ove patina or Ann. des. sc. nat., II, t. 1, and a8 
in general, Unger: Annalen d. Wiener Museums, part IT. 
Eé “Mayer: Noy. act. aead. L. C. nat. eur. XVI, 2, p. 771, t. 58 et 59, and 
Brown : On the female flower and fruit of Haglesia and Hydnora, 1844, pl. 6-9. 
