[A Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World by Charles Darwin]@TWC D-Link bookA Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World CHAPTER IX 67/67
Our conception of a compound animal, where in some respects the individuality of each is not completed, may be aided, by reflecting on the production of two distinct creatures by bisecting a single one with a knife, or where Nature herself performs the task of bisection.
We may consider the polypi in a zoophyte, or the buds in a tree, as cases where the division of the individual has not been completely effected.
Certainly in the case of trees, and judging from analogy in that of corallines, the individuals propagated by buds seem more intimately related to each other, than eggs or seeds are to their parents.
It seems now pretty well established that plants propagated by buds all partake of a common duration of life; and it is familiar to every one, what singular and numerous peculiarities are transmitted with certainty, by buds, layers, and grafts, which by seminal propagation never or only casually reappear. (PLATE 43.
BERKELEY SOUND, FALKLAND ISLANDS.).
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