264 METAMOEPHOSES OF MAN 



or emigration, and although the former is as constantly 

 enlarging its faubourgs as the latter is burning them 

 down from time to time. It is just the same with 

 the polypidoms and ascidian plates. 



These views, though long since admitted into 

 zoological science, were embraced at a later period by 

 botany, although their truth is far more evident in 

 the latter. 



No matter what may be the results of vegetation, 

 the oak and the lime are always trees; the myrtle 

 and the rose are always shrubs. Neither the savant 

 nor the ordinary observer can say that one or other 

 of these plants is monstrous or incomplete, whether 

 they be large or small, bushy or thickly branched, 

 growing freely or closely clipped. The number of 

 their parts is not determinate, therefore they are not 

 individuals, they are only aggregations. A tree is a 

 species of vegetable polyp, whose common parts are 

 the trunk, roots, and branches. 



How can we distinguish and isolate the beings 

 which correspond to the polyps — the vegetable in- 

 dividuals ? 



Botanists are not agreed on this point. Some, who 

 think that the leaf appears in a modified form in every 

 organ as the fundamental element, regard it as the 

 vegetable individual. Others, associating this same 

 leaf with the condition of an organ, suppose the 

 individuality to reside in the germ, that is to say, in 

 the seed and bud. They consider the branch pro- 

 duced by either to be an individual. Many facts, 

 and not unfrequently the same ones differently in- 

 terpreted, have been brought forward in support of 

 their views by the advocates of the two doctrines. 



