INDIVIDUALITT. 205 



be continuous or discontinuous (§ 50) is a matter of secondary 

 importance ; that the totality of living tissue to which the 

 fertilized germ gives rise in any one case, is the equivalent 

 of the totality to which it gives rise in any other case ; and 

 that we must recognize this equivalence, whether such totality 

 of living tissue takes a concrete or a discrete arrangement. 

 In pursuance of this view, a zoological individual is consti- 

 tuted either by any such single animal as a mammal or bird, 

 which may properly claim tlie title of a zoon, or by any such 

 group of animals as the numerous Medusm that have been 

 developed from the same egg, which are to be severally dis- 

 tinguished as zooids. 



Admitting it to be very desirable that there should be 

 words for expressing these relations and this equivalence, it 

 may still be objected, that to apply the word individual to a 

 number of separate living bodies, is inconvenient : conflictingso 

 much, as it does, with the ordinary conception which this word 

 suggests. It seems a questionable use of language to say that 

 the countless masses of Anacharis Alsinastrum, which, within 

 these few years, have grown up in our rivers, canals, and 

 ponds, are all parts of one individual ; and yet as this plant 

 does not seed in England, these countless masses, having 

 arisen by discontinuous development, must be so regarded, if 

 we accept the above definition. 



It may be contended, too, that while it does violence to 

 our established way of thinking, this mode of interpreting 

 the facts is not without its difiiculties— smaller, perhaps, 

 than those it escapes, but stiU considerable. Something 

 seems to be gained by restricting the application of the title 

 individual, to organisms which, being in all respects fully 

 developed, possess the power of producing their kind after 

 the ordinary sexual method ; and denying this title to those 

 incomplete organisms which have not this power. But the 

 definition does not really establish this distinction for us. On 

 the one hand, we have cases in which, as in the working bee, 

 the whole of the germ-product is aggregated into a single 



