The Orderly Cycles Pursued in Growth 375 



are simply instances wherein the stem, which ordinarily ceases to 

 grow in a flower bud, keeps on growing just as it does in the leaf 

 buds, though why it should do so is not as yet known. We have 

 a partial case of the same thing in the navel orange, in w^hich the 

 receptacle or stem grows part way up through 

 the fruit and makes there a second series of 

 carpels, which constitute the secondary orange 

 within the navel; and the same thing carried 

 farther in apples sometimes gives us a two- 

 storied fruit. 



As to other monstrosities they are legion, — 

 enough, indeed, so that their mere synoptical 

 description suffices to fill large volumes devoted 



to the subject. Flowers double profusely; 



"* . . n ^^°- 145.— A Straw- 



leaves instead of then* characteristic flatness . berry, in which the 



1 ., ., p. J^ e c -i T_ stem that forms the 



exhibit often the lorm 01 a pitcher or cup; fj-^jt ^^s grown out 

 pistils become open leaves, exposing the ovules, fe3° branch (Co° ied 



which themselves become altered at tmies to from Masters' Vege- 

 table Teratology.) 



tiny leaflets; apples and cucumbers produce 

 leaves on the sides of their fruits; flowers become green, and 

 bracts of the stem assume the colors of flowers; and so many 

 other alterations of form, color, size and regularity occur that 

 it sometimes seems as if every deviation from normality struc- 

 turally possible in any and every part of the plant became some- 

 time or other actually realized in fact. Some of these mon- 

 strosities are hereditary, though mostly they are not, and many 

 of them could be propagated by grafting if it were thought 

 worth while. It is e\ddent that they merge without break over 

 into those extreme variations which are called, horticulturally, 

 sports. 



Monstrosities are sometimes reversions to an ancestral condi- 

 tion, and formerly they were thought always to be so. Hence 

 they were supposed to throw light upon evolution and classifica- 

 tion, an idea embodied in Goethe's saying that "by her mistakes 



