ON AN ANOMALOUS FORM OF THE PLUM. 93 



most profitably directed to the subject of analogies, and 

 nothing is so likely to confirm theories derived from a study 

 of the normal organization, as the finding that these theories 

 apply equally to the same organization when in an abnormal 

 (or as it was formerly called, a monstrous) form. In fact, 

 we are persuaded that theories which do not apply to those 

 monsters, and readily explain them, are expressed in terms 

 either not correct, or not sufficiently general. Monsters, 

 whether of the animal or vegetable type, are cases left us by 

 nature, to instruct us how she forms the perfect individual, 

 and when and why her usual operations may be varied and 

 suspended in their progress. There is perhaps no theory 

 which has thrown so much light upon vegetable physiology, 

 as that proposed by Goethe, in regard to the analogies which 

 exist between a flower-bud and a leaf-bud. According to 

 this theory, the origin of the parts composing the flower-bud, 

 is the same as that of the parts contained in a simple leaf-bud. 

 Thus, all the bracteas, the sepals, the petals, the stamens, the 

 pieces of the nectary, and the ovarium, are subject to the 

 same laws of arrangement as the leaves themselves; in other 

 words, there was a time in the early life of the bud, when the 

 parts composing it might either have been developed into 

 leaves, stipules, tendrils and branches, or bracte^, sepals, 

 petals, stamens, nectaries and ovarium. Botanists know 

 that we are in some cases able to see on the normal plant, a 

 transition from the one to the other form ; that we. may, by 

 appropriate treatment, cause the one to revert back to the 

 other, and that we can also in many cases of spontaneous 

 anomaly, trace incontestible evidence of this process of 

 metamorphosis or change having been effected. By the 

 theory just hinted at, we are made aware that if the 

 fruit be a developed ovarium, and if an ovarium be only a 

 modified leaf or leaves, that the fruit may often exhibit proofs 

 of its foliaceous origin. It is not to be understood that a 

 monocarpous or a polycarpous fruit was ever a single leaf 

 or several leaves, bnt rather that it might have been such, if it 



