470 Miscellaneous. 



are more than one species confounded under this name. I am in- 

 clined to the former view ; but if this is the case, it shows that the 

 skulls and teeth do not present such good specific characters as many 

 zoologists are willing to believe. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



MONSTROUS ROSES*. 



Now that the spring is advancing, and nature is about to repeat 

 the marvellous processes, which, when they are deranged by any cir- 

 cumstances, produce what we call monstrous flowers, we are anxious 

 to prepare our readers to watch such phsenomena by again directing 

 them to the theory of morphology, taking for illustration the curious 

 changes which were observed everywhere last year in the condition 

 of the Rose. To the amateur they were a source of mortification, 

 and to the unlearned observer, of wonder; but to the botanist, of 

 admiration. The first deplored the deformity of his favourite flowers, 

 without suspecting that it tended to elucidate one of the most cu- 

 rious points in their structure ; the second puzzled himself in vain 

 attempts to comprehend how Roses should grow out of Roses, or 

 leaves and branches spring up from flowers ; the third seized the 

 evidence, weighed it, compared it with other evidence, and saw that 

 it formed the most beautiful explanation of the means by which the 

 great Author of Nature has provided plants with the means of per- 

 petuating their race. 



Linnseus taught, and Goethe proved, that all flowers are but ar- 

 rangements of altered leaves. The one thought that their birth was 

 anticipated in order to obtain the means of building up the blossom ; 

 the other demonstrated, that although the fanciful doctrine of antici- 

 pation was unsupported by evidence, yet that the blossom was really 

 formed, in all its parts, by leaves in what a chemist would call a 

 nascent state. 



Goethe thus laid the foundation of the modern school of struc- 

 tural botany ; and if his successors have worked out his ideas, and 

 applied them to all cases in all plants, they have done no more. It 

 is now known that a flower is analogous to a leaf-bud, consisting of 

 scales within scales, packed with the most admirable method ; that 

 in its ordinary condition nature moulds these flower- scales to par- 

 ticular purposes, and stamps them with new attributes ; but that if 

 the cosmic forces which regulate and determine customary develop- 

 ment are interfered with, these scales resume more or less completely 

 their original quality, and become leaves. Hence it follows, that in 

 cases of disturbed organization a flower extends its centre into a 



* This article is reprinted from the ' Gardeners' Chronicle ' for March 13, 

 1847, and the Editors are indebted to the khidness of Dr. Lindley for the 

 loan of the woodcuts illustrating these remarkable monstrosities. 



