Variations of Paris quadrifolia, 433 



maly, we may suppose that this plant is ever struggling, as it 

 were, to become double in all its parts ; but that it seldom 

 succeeds, except in the case of the leaves, in subdividing and 

 developing any more than one of the subordinate parts of each 

 separate whorl. If each part were split up into two, by the 

 sort of process exhibited in y%-. 86. c to g, the plant would 

 then acquire the maximum of developement indicated by the 

 law suggested from Table II. But if, on the other hand, we 

 assume that these maximum values belong to the normal con- 

 dition of this Paris, we have still a monocotyledon regularly 

 subdivided into multiples of S ; only now we must ascribe its 

 ordinary character to a constant tendency to abortion in the 

 separate parts of each whorl. Which of these two hypotheses, 

 or whether either of them, may be correct, it would be prema- 

 ture to decide. I shall, however, be very happy in finding 

 any of your correspondents inclined to assist me in the in- 

 vestigation, by constructing similar tables from specimens 

 procured in different habitats. I would, however, suggest an 

 improvement in the mode of making these observations, which 

 did not occur to me before, viz. to estimate the number of 

 parts in the innermost whorl (or pistil of the flower), from 

 the number of cells in the ovarium, and not from the number 

 of the stigmas. Whenever there are more stigmas than cells, 

 an asterisk may then be placed against the subvariety, as in 

 Table I., indicating a tendency in some part of this whorl to 

 become double. I am, Sir, yours, &c. 



Cambridge, Feb. 4. 1832. J. S. HENSLowi^^ 



In Vol. IV. p. 446-7. is a list of the rarer plants of Essex ; and J. G., 

 its author, remarks : — "In the Thrift Wood, near Chelmsford, Paris 

 quadrifolia thickly covers the sloping sides of a pond (which is filled with 

 tlottonia palustris), and grows to an unusual size: many of the specimens 

 have five leaves." This remark suggests some connection between a 

 vigorous condition of the plant, and the production of a fifth leaf. 



Gerard Edwards Smith (of St. John's College, Oxford), in his Catalogue 

 of the PhcBnogamous Plants of South Kenty states that he met with several 

 specimens of Paris quadrifolia, precisely in the condition of Professor 

 Henslow's twenty-eighth variety above, in a wood at Stowting; and adds 

 that he found such specimens to be severally furnished with a 5-celled seed- 

 vessel. Of one of these specimens he figures, in plate i. of his Catalogue, 

 a flower, to exhibit the quinary division of its parts, and gives beside it a 

 detached figure of the 5-angled 5-stigmaed germen, and another of a 

 transverse section of it, for the sake of displaying the 5 cells of which it 

 consists, and that one of these cells is larger than the remaining 4, as it is 

 remarked to have been in the explanatory description. 



Sir J. E. Smith, in Rees's Cyclopcediay describes two species of Paris ; 

 one, our English P. quadrifolia ; the other, a species from Nepal, which 

 he denominates P. polyphjUa. His entire description of it is here present-- 

 ed : — " P. polyphylla, Many-leaved herb Paris. Leaves lanceolate, 8 or 10, 



Vol. V.~No. 27. f f -• wi^ii^sia mUXtTx^ 



