424 MISS G. LISTER ON THE ORIGIN OF 
In the female plant the central part of the very young flower is 
raised asa convex elevation above the staminal whorls when the 
latter have just appeared (though in this species they do not 
continue far in their development). Round the lower part of 
this elevation five prominences arise; these, the rudimentary 
carpels, grow up and coalesce in such a way as to form five broad 
pockets round the centre. The whole constitutes the rudimen- 
tary capsule, its wall and dissepiments (whose free upper edges 
are all on the same level) being formed by the carpels and their 
much inflexed margins (Pl. X XXII. figs. 2, 3). 
When the whole has grown till the length of the capsule almost 
equals twice its breadth, the dissepiments no longer meet in the 
centre; they project above from the capsule walls as free plates of 
tissue. The upper part of the capsule then becomes narrower, its 
walls growing faster than the dissepiments ; or, in other words, the 
outer parts of the carpellary leaves grow faster than their inflexed 
margins. The capsule finally closes in above, and the extremity of 
each carpel is continued upwards to form one of the five stigmas. 
Before the mouth of the capsule has closed in, the ovules 
begin to appear, the upper ones developing first. They arise in 
the lower 5-locular part of the capsule in a double row from the 
inner side of each loculus, and in the upper unilocular part, from 
either side of the margins of the plates that project freely into the 
cavity of the capsule. From forty to sixty ovules are formed in 
each loeulus (Pl. XXXII. figs. 7-9). 
When the flower opens, the central axis is no longer united to 
the capsule-walls by the dissepiments except in its lower part and 
at the roof of the capsule; from this it is broken away after 
flowering, and the placentation then appears to be entirely free- 
central. 
In the male flower of Lychnis diurna the carpellary whorl is 
not developed. Within the staminal whorls a column of tissue 
projects into the centre of the flower; this may be the elongated 
floral axis around which the carpellary leaves have not been 
formed. 1t often corresponds in length with that space in the 
capsule of the female flower extending from the base of the cap- 
sule to where the dissepiments become free. The length of this 
column, however, varies in different specimens; sometimes it is 
scarcely developed at all (Pl. XXXII. fig. 12). 
In Dianthus barbatus, also a member of the group Silenez, the 
carpels rise higher above the apex of the axis before the ovules 
