REJUVENESCENCE IN NATURE. 23 



with the latter.* The bud breaks out subsequently 

 through the bark in which it was previously concealed. 

 In this instance there can be no doubt that the sprout is 

 really a new, and in this case even an accidental product, 

 a new commencement of life, which creates its own 

 sphere of formation, its own point of vegetation, and 

 through the development of this^ its own axis, around 

 which it arranges its organs. Hereby we are warranted 

 in regarding the sprout as an individual, for, if we may 

 ascribe individuality to the plant generally, in which we 

 are certainly justified by the repetition of its mode of 

 appearance in determinate cycles of development, we 

 must, consequently, conceive the individual as a develop- 

 mental series of unit power, and set up as its ci'iterion 

 the unity of the point of vegetation from which the series 

 proceeds, or, in the developed condition, the unity of the 

 axis. According to this, only the simple sprout can be 

 regarded as a vegetable individual, and that this, far 

 as the vegetable individual stands behind the animal 

 individual in inner unity, is actually the analogue of the 

 animal individual, is proved beyond all doubt by com- 

 parison with those animals in Avhich " family stocks" are 

 produced by the formation of sprouts. 



The formation of the compound vegetable "stocks" 

 (trunks or common stems) is thus a phenomenon of pro- 

 pagation, if we use this expression according to the 

 meaning of the word and the custom of language, in 

 general application to the production of new individuals 

 for the increase and maintenance of the species of plant. 

 Propagation by the formation of sprouts, on which not 

 only depends the formation of compound stocks, but in 

 which is also given the possibihty of the formation of 

 separate stocks, has indeed been distinguished as mere 

 multiplication from the proper (sexual) propagation, or 



* Trecul ' Recherches sur TOrigine des Bourgeons Adventifa.' 'Ann, 

 des Sc. Nat.,' 3 ser. viii, 268, 1847. The cases there described as two 

 different modes of origin, and represented in Plate vii, fig. 6 under h and h', 

 may probably be only stages of one and the same process. 



