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CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 



Thus have we completed our design of subjecting to 

 minute inspection, in the example of the development of 

 the Vegetable Organism, the phenomenon of Rejuve- 

 nescence, a phenomenon profoundly connected with the 

 essence of natural life, and lying at the base of all 

 progressive movement of life and development, with its 

 multifariously complicated ascending and descending 

 vibrations, in the largest as in the smallest circle of 

 Nature, since this movement is sustained in every 

 case only by renovation. We have examined it in the 

 Formation of Sprouts, by which the individual vegetable 

 stock is expanded into the trunk of a family, which, in 

 essential or inessential combination, distributes the 

 individual functions amongst its members ; we have 

 traced it in the sprout itself, in the formation of its 

 graduated and articulated interlinked structure, in the 

 great tide of the graduated metamorphosis, as in the 

 individual waves of this, the Leaves; finally, we have 

 recognized again in the smallest sphere of formation, in 

 which the vegetable strives to establish its everywhere 

 only imperfectly attained individuality, in Cell-formation, 

 with which every cycle of development commences, and 

 by the divided or undivided, homogeneous or hetero- 

 geneous, combined or free renovation of which, the 

 plant carries to fulfilment the multiplicity of structure of 

 all its organs, and indeed lays the foundation for the 

 vital continuation of the species beyond the limit of the 



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