1904 | Leavitt,— Translocation of Characters in Plants 25 
are ambiguous. They may or may not be genuine instances of 
reversion. They are possibly assignable to the category of translo- 
cations. 
They would, however, be highly suggestive as independent sources 
of evidence, were it not that it can be clearly demonstrated that 
organs may be replaced by non-homologous organs, or may com- 
bine in themselves along with their own proper characters, the 
attributes of organs with which they are not homologous. Modifica- 
tions of the Angiospermous ovule are especially instructive on this 
point. Masters has assembled! in his Teratology many accounts, 
from which it appears that, in addition to the modification described 
above from Planchon, ovules may be replaced by whole anthers, 
whole pistils, leaflets, whole leaves, and finally leafy shoots. ‘The 
fusion of characters may be in any proportion. Thus in Passiflora 
coerulea, Salter? found a complete series of formations connecting 
anthers and ovules. “The pollen-bearing ovules were borne on the 
edges of these ovaries, and presented various intermediate conditions 
between anthers and ovules, commencing at the distal extremity of 
the carpel with a bilobed anther, and passing in series to the base of 
the ovary, an antheroid body of ovule-like form, a modified ovule 
containing pollen, an ovule departing from a perfectly natural condi- 
tion only in the development of a few grains of pollen in its nucleus, 
and, finally, a perfect, normal ovule.” Similarly Berkeley? found 
in a Carnation the characters of ovules and pistils blended in various 
degrees. Wigand t explicitly states that in Reseda alba he observed 
ovules in all stages of shoot-formation. The conversion of the 
nucellus to a branch has also been observed in Alliaria (Sisymbrium) 
and Nigrella. It is plain that whatever the morphology of the ovule, 
it cannot be the homologue of a// the structures enumerated above, 
whose details it occasionally borrows. And these considerations 
throw much doubt upon the teratological evidence, considered as 
self-sustained testimony, supposed to reveal the nature of synergid, 
ventral canal cell, and ovuliferous scale. Before the abnormal for- 
mations can be held to be significant in a phylogenetic way, it must 
be shown that they are not to be classed with these various modifica- 
tions of the ovule, as phenomena of morphic translocation. 
1 Vegetable Teratology, pp. 262-271. ta, c., 207. 
Z. c., 196: * Grundlegung des Pflanzen-Teratologie, p. 39. 
