PHYSIOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 637 



' In the Prolepsis the speculative matter, which Linnaeus himself 

 carefully distinguishes as sflch, must be separated from the rest, and this 

 may I think be done in most of the sections. He starts with explain- 

 ing clearly and well the origin and position of buds, and their constant 

 presence, whether developed or not, in the axil of the leaf : adding 

 abundance of acute observations and experiments to prove his state- 

 ments. The leaf he declares to be the first effort of the plant in 

 spring : he proceeds to show, successively, that bracts, calyx, corolla, 

 stamens, and pistil are each of them metamorphosed leaves, in every 

 case giving HAXY EXAMPLES, both from monsters and from characters 

 presented by those organs in their normal condition. 



" The (to me) obscure and critical part of the Prolepsis was that 

 relating to the change of the style of Carduus into two leaves. Mr. 

 Brown has explained this. He says it was a puzzle to him, till he 

 went to Upsala and consulted Fries and AVahlenberg, who informed 

 him that such monstrous Cardui grew in the neighborhood, and pro- 

 cured him some. Considering; how minute and masked the organs of 



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Composite are, it shows no little skill in Linnaeus, and a very clear 

 view of the whole matter, to have traced the metamorphosis of all 

 their floral organs into leaves, except their stamens, of which he says, 

 ' Sexti anni folia e staminibus me non in compositis vidisse fateor, sed 

 illorum loco folia pistillacea, qute in compositis aut plenis sunt frequen- 

 tissima.' I must say that nothing could well be clearer to my mind 

 than the full and accurate appreciation which Linnaeus shows of the 

 whole series of phenomena, and their rationale. He over and over 

 again asserts that these organs are leaves, every one of them, I do 

 not understand him to say that the prolepsis is an accidental change 

 of leaves into bracts, of bracts into calyx, and so forth. Even were 

 the language more obscure, much might be inferred from the wide 

 range and accuracy of the observations he details so scientifically. It 

 is inconceivable that a man should have traced the sequence of the 

 phenomena under so many varied aspects, and shown such skill, 

 knowledge, ingenuity, and accuracy in his methods of observing and 

 describing, and yet missed the rationale of the whole. Eliminate the 

 speculative parts, and there is not a single error of observation or 

 judgment ; whilst his history of the dev elopement of buds, leaves, 

 and floral organs, and of various other obscure matters of equal inter- 

 est and importance, are of a very high order of merit, are, in fact, for 

 the time profound. 



" There is nothing in all this that detracts from the merit of Goethe'* 



