A CP Kw 
22 Rhodora (FEBRUARY 
reproductive functions were united in a single foliar organ we must 
probably go back into the fern-like ancestry. The common original 
of modern Angiospermous foliage leaf and carpel, then, was in all 
probability a kind of fern frond. Tbe aberrant carpel of Drosera 
bears no resemblance to a fern frond. 
It is evident that the abnormal carpel does not reproduce a form 
from which it has been derived, but rather has taken to itself proper- 
ties of a coórdinate derivative member, the foliage leaf. The abnor- 
mal carpel is not, therefore, in any strict sense reversionary. But it 
may be held that the phenomenon is ativistic in its general tendency. 
This however is not the case. If we inquire which of the two 
states, the normal carpellary, or the tentaculiferous vegetative con- 
dition, is more original — that is, whether the leaf or the carpel is 
more like the common sporophyll ancestor — then we shall have to 
answer that the carpel is the more conservative. In one important 
respect only, in that it is a free and independent part, is the leaf less 
modified. In its anatomy, consistency, and shape, neither of the 
members is much like the probably fern-like original sporoph yll. 
But certainly the leaf with its very peculiar appendages and physio- 
logical activities is the more highly specialized. Also it has lost the 
power which the original sporophyll possessed of forming spores. 
The carpel retains this important reproductive function and is still 
capable of doing some assimilatory work. This general estimate of 
the relative position of the two kinds of organs in the evolutionary 
scale, which makes the carpel the more primitive, is supported by a 
recent judgment of Bower's. “The inflorescence, or flower, on this 
view, though produced later than the vegetative region in the individ- 
ual life, embodies the more primitive parts, viz., those which bear the 
sporangia and spores. The vegetative region is in its origin mostly 
if not wholly, secondary." 
In the phylogenetic meaning, then, the monstrous carpels of 
Dresera are not retrogressive ; on the contrary the metamorphosis is, 
in a sense, progressive. 
Gentiana crinita.— ln Miss Prince's Gentian, similarly, the relation 
of things in evolutionary time is fortunately clear. The fringe of 
the corolla lobes, being specific, is a late feature. It is supposedly 
not so old as the generic characters. The carpel on the other hand 
1 Science, 20: 532 (1904). 
