Miscellaneous. 



they would help a plant that had them in pushing itself forward 

 toward the light. For, in a struggle, the lateral heads would be- 

 come etiolated and abortive by the close contact of neighbouring 

 plants, and the terminal head would alone have a chance of pushing 

 forward and forming seed. Meantime the new variety would be 

 spending its strength (like a Protectionist) in favouring a non-paying 

 "manufactory." Clearly, therefore, the old, one-headed cauli- 

 flowers, unburdened with unprofitable speculations and concentrating 

 all their energies on one result, would stand the better chance of 

 turning their " crown into a pound." But, be this as it may, I wish 

 now to call the attention of your readers to another monster, which, 

 by a curious coincidence, appeared at Kew about the same time that 

 Mr. Darwin's book appeared in Albemarle Street, and which, if I 

 interpret it aright, speaks much more forcibly against the truth of 

 Mr. Darwin's hypothesis than your cauliflower, on the most favour- 

 able interpretation, says in its favour. I allude to a monstrosity in 

 Begonia frigida, figured in the 'Botanical Magazine,' t. 5160. fig. 4, 

 and thus described by Sir William Hooker: "Our artist, Mr. 

 Fitch, while making the drawing, detected a curious morphological 

 structure in the fact of one of the flowers having an inferior perianth 

 of four very unequal sepals (such as are indicative of a male flower) ; 

 and above their point of insertion are four stamens (apparently per- 

 fect), alternating with four superior, free, ovate ovaries, each with a 

 short style, and two downy linear stigmas. It is to be regretted 

 that no section was made of these ovaries, which, from situation and 

 in form, so little resemble the three-celled inferior fruit of Begonia" 

 To this account I may add that Dr. Hooker assures me that the 

 ovules appeared to be normal, such as might have been fertilized. 

 Let us suppose that they were perfect, and had been allowed to 

 seed ; every gardener would anticipate, I presume, that some of the 

 progeny at least, if not all, would have borne similar flowers. Now, 

 had this occurred hi a state of nature, and had a botanist collected a 

 plant with such flowers, he would not only have placed it in a dis- 

 tinct genus from Begonia, but would probably have considered it as 

 the type of a new natural order. Can it be possible, then, that 

 genera and even natural orders spring up like mushrooms in this 

 sudden manner? According to Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, the thing 

 is impossible ; for it would have required hundreds, perhaps thou- 

 sands of successive generations to have enabled "natural selection" 

 to convert an inferior ovary and unisexual flowers into a superior 

 ovary and bisexual flowers. If there be one thing more frequently 

 iterated than another in Mr. Darwin's book, it is this : that "it is 

 fatal to my theory" if changes be not slowly progressive, by the 

 accumulation of small increments from generation to generation ; 

 increments which, at first, may be only obvious to a breeder, but 

 which, "bred up to" continuously, are sufficient, through "natural 

 selection" alone (as we are told p. 186), to change the eye-speck of 

 a Medusa into the human eye (if not to transform a slave-making 

 ant into a Southern States-man). If time be only long enough, and 

 generations and divarications of form many enough, according to the 

 theory, not only such things may be done, but they have been done ! 



