1905] Leavitt, — Translocation of Characters in Plants 23 
is an ancient structure. When the abnormal carpel puts on the 
fringe it displays a character not to be found in its own phylogenetic 
line. Simply the fringe is borrowed. There is no reversion. 
Saxifraga virginiensis.— Itis more difficult to pronounce upon the 
nature of staminody in Mr. Sears’s Saxifraga. Petals may well have 
arisen by the sterilization of stamens. And if so, the replacement 
of petals by stamens might be considered as a kind of reversion. 
But the stamen from which the petal of our Polypetalae was derived 
(if from any) was not Saxifragaceous; and therefore the super- 
numerary stamens of S. virginiensis stand for the originals of the 
petals only in a very general way, at most. Staminody, which as 
stated above is found in several widely separated families, is of 
interest chiefly in conjunction with the opposite conversion, viz., that 
of stamens to petals, an anomaly of very much commoner occur- 
rence. When we consider the two phenomena together it becomes 
evident that if one of them is in the nature of reversion, the other 
cannot be. Indeed, to my mind neither of the abnormalities is ata- 
vistic. The actual character of the change is, I believe, the same as 
that which we have seen in the cases of Drosera and Gentiana just 
discussed. By anticipation in the development of the flower, char- 
acters of one whorl of organs have passed to a lower circle. Stam- 
inody and petalody are phenomena merely of replacement. 
Morpuic TRANSLOCATION.— That which has occurred in these 
three illustrative cases may perhaps best be grasped under the idea 
of morphic translocation. ‘The essence of the facts I conceive to 
be this: that structures which historically have been developed in 
certain parts of the plant body have suddenly made their appearance 
in other parts. Droseraceous tentacles we may suppose were the 
product of a long process of evolution, in the course of which 
originally sessile glands became stalked, and the stalks acquired an 
internal mechanism securing flexibility and the transmission of stim- 
ulus. These highly remarkable organs were developed as parts of 
the foliage leaf. Now of a sudden they appear upon the sepals, 
petals and carpels. The fringe of the Gentian came into being as 
a structure of the corolla and possibly plays a part in the economy 
of the flower. By a jump it now appears upon the carpel. 
In the infinite variety of monstrous forms there are many of a differ- 
ent nature from those which have here been the subject of discussion. 
Oftentimes new patterns and conformations appear for which no 
