€ M. Morren on the Spur-shaped Nectaries 



the spurred cornet, do not begin to afford this sugared liquid 

 until precisely when the first anther blows. The secretion 

 lasts only as long as the stamens are capable of performing 

 their functions, and at the end of three or four days the 

 flower leaves off this ejection of fluid and of pollen, and 

 drops the organs which produced both the one and the other*. 

 This curious remark is quite correct; we have verified it. 

 From this we might be led to suppose that the secretion of 

 the nectar, which is here so intimately connected with the 

 functions of the stamens, becomes necessary to the action of 

 the sexes ; but from ten unblown flowers, where there had 

 been neither dehiscence of the anthers, nor secretion of nectar 

 by the spurs, Kurr cut away those organs : the further de- 

 velopment took place without any difference, and these flowers 

 bore as many and as large fruits as they ordinarily do ; the 

 seeds germinated as usual f. This experiment gives great 

 support to those who consider the nectar as being only a true 

 excretion, comparable to our urine, and which is of no use, 

 at least in the great majority of cases, in the process of fecun- 

 dation, as was generally supposed. Kurr, however, does not 

 give his opinion as to the proper nature of the spurs. 



Lindley, in his new edition of the ' Introduction to Botany,^ 

 (1839) no longer gives (to the great regret of the friends of deep 

 scientific research) the interesting and useful part on mor- 

 phology; but this judicious author, in his edition of 1832 J, 

 had published some very curious details upon the Aquilegia 

 vulgaris. " The petals of this plant,^* says he, " consist of a 

 long, sessile, purple horn or bag. with a spreading margin, 

 while the stamens consist of a slender filament, bearing a 

 small, oblong, 2- celled, yellow anther. In single and regularly- 

 formed flowers, nothing can be more unlike than the petals and 

 stamens; but in double flowers the transition is complete. 

 The petals which first begin to change, provide themselves 

 with slender ungues : the next contract their margin, and 

 acquire a still longer unguis : in the next the purple margin 

 disappears entirely; two yellow lobes like the cells of the 

 anther take its place, and the horn, diminished in size, no 

 longer proceeds from the base, as in the genuine petal, but 

 from the apex of the now filiform unguis : in the last transi- 

 tion the lobes of the anther are more fully formed, and the 

 horn is almost contracted within the dimensions of the con- 

 nective, retaining, however, its purple colour : the next stage 



* Kurr. Untersuchungen iiber die Bedeutung, &c. Stutgard, 1833. 



t Ibid, p. 128. 



: Lindley. Introduction to Botany (1832), p. 515.— [Ed. 1835, p. 536.] 



