4 M. Morren on the Spur-shaped Nectaries 



their character, and that character raised them to the rank of 

 organs sui generis, not proceeding from any other : — they 

 were, because they were. 



They were, however, not nectaries, because by their nature 

 they were stamens : here is that truth which science had not 

 then become possessed of. 



But when, at the end of the last century, Goethe, following 

 the example of WolflP, established his celebrated theory of the 

 metamorphosis of plants, the nectaries at once lost their auto- 

 chthonous nature ; they were no longer aboriginal organs. On 

 the contrary, in this new theory the nectaries became essen- 

 tially organs of transition, mere forms of anterior organs ; they 

 were, in short, intermediary organs of passage between the pe- 

 tals and the stamens^. In the spirit of this philosophic me- 

 thod, it was necessary to understand, that in order for the 

 petal to become a stamen, in an ascending metamorphosis, it 

 must previously pass through the form of a nectary. More- 

 over, Goethe, who took precisely the Columbine as the exam- 

 ple of one of the most remarkable and most striking trans- 

 formations, considered, as he says, the cuculliform nectaries of 

 this flower as a derivation from the petalsf. We shall see, on the 

 contrary, that the progress of nature is a descending metamor- 

 phosis ; that is to say, that the nectary is, in its genesis, a sta- 

 men, and subsidiarily, that a stamen being developed as such, 

 it may afterwards turn into a nectary. 



The theory of Goethe had made too little impression in 

 France to admit of the supposition, that in 1815 Mirbel set 

 out from it when he regarded the nectaries of the Columbine, 

 as well as all organs of the same kind, as anomalous forms of 

 the parts of the perianthium. The spur-shaped cornets of the 

 Aquilegia were also, in his eyes, forms of petals ; but the ano- 

 maly attacking all the petals at once, the flower remained re- 

 gular X' It was one of the successive alterations of types, 

 and in the Columbine particularly this alteration was created 

 in order to become an organ of secretion. A glandular lamina 

 existed for this purpose at the bottom of the cornet-shaped 

 petals §. The petal was the type. 



This lamina we have never found ; and in the Aquilegia glan- 

 dulosa, the Aquilegia atrata, &c., we have seen that there only 

 exist one, or two, or three cornets without the regularity of 

 the flow^er being perverted, as is the case in the Nasturtium, 



* Goethe. CEuvres d'Histoire Naturelle. Edition de Martius et Turpin. 

 Paris, 1837, p. 22G. 



t Ibid, p. 228, chap. 56. 



X Mirbeh Elemens de Physiologie, vol. i. p. 269. 



§ Goethe. CEuvres d'Histoire Naturelle. Edition de Martius. 



