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327 



























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as a leaf or leaves, as a shoot with or without leaves, as an 

 outgrowth from a leaf or from an axis, or as something neither 

 truly foliar nor strictly axial : — thus it has been considered as a 

 leaf (Richard, Lindley) ; an open carpellary leaf (E. Brown) ; a 

 ligula, enation, or placental outgrowth from the bract-leaf (Sachs, 

 Eichler) ; a " d6doublement " of the bract (Brongniart) ; a pair of 

 leaves belonging to an otherwise undeveloped shoot and more or 

 less coherent and twisted out of place, a view held with more or 

 leas modification of detail by R. Brown, Von Mohl, A. Braun, 

 Caspary, Oersted, Parlatore, Van Tieghem, Stenzel, "Willkomm, 

 Engelmann, Celakovsky, and Velanofsky; a disk-like outgrowth 

 from the axis of a leafless shoot axillary to the bract (Stras- 

 burger) ; a rachis (F. von Mueller) ; a cladode (Schleiden, 

 Baillon, Dickson, Areangeli). 



It may be observed that these opinions are not really so 

 diverse as they appear to be, for every one of them is sup- 

 ported by some fact or other beyond dispute, yet also by 

 assumptions of more or less doubtful validity aud by arguments 

 more or less partial in their application or untenable in the 

 light of more recently acquired knowledge. Embarrassed by 

 such conflict of opinion, some have tried to evade the difficulty 

 by the assumption that the organ in question has a distinct 

 morphological significance in different genera. The substantial 

 uniformity of anatomical structure throughout the whole series, 

 however, seems to negative this suggestion, and to show that 

 what it is in one member of the order that it is, with more or 

 less modification, in all. 



While anxious to add to our store of facts I should hesitate 

 to indulge in any hypothetical explanation of them that was 

 materially at variance with any proposed by more competent 

 botanists. Chiefly because it is scarcely if at all inconsistent 

 with any of them and involves no unproven assumption, I 

 venture to offer the following hypothetical explanation for 

 consideration. The facts detailed in former pages show beyond 

 dispute that the fruit-scale is something superadded to the 

 bract ; that it may arise as an enation either from the base 

 of the bract or apparently from the axis just within or above 

 lfc ; that its structure is neither that of the leaf proper nor 

 that of an ordinary shoot, but that it does present close resem- 

 blance in structure with a cladode as described by Dickson. 















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