178 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



The inside branchlets get gradually weaker, until spur after spur in succes- 

 sive j'ears loses the power of forming verticillate leaves, produces male flowers, 

 the last effort of life, and then expires. Clear as I think the illustrations 

 in my previous paper were to show that the production of male and 

 female flowers in Conifers was a mere question of a relative flow of vital 

 force, nothing can better illustrate it than this one of the Larch. 



I now come to the chief point of the present paper — the influence of these 

 laws of vigor in the modification of the parts of fructification. You will 

 see in some of these weaker shoots, which in the production of male flowers 

 most of the spurs have performed the last sad offices of life, a few have had 

 just enough extra vigor vouchsafed to them to produce female cones, and 

 that it is just these weak cones lohich produce the lengthened bracts. I have com- 

 pared with those of Larix Griffithii. 



I have said in my paper on " Taxodium and Penus," in reply to an objec- 

 tion that my point as regards Glfiptostrobus sinensis and Taxodium disltchum 

 being the same thing, is probably wrong, because the parts of fructification dif- 

 fer in each, — that as these parts of fructification are but modified leaves, the 

 game law of change ought to operate on them as well. This instance of 

 Larix proves it to be so. The bracts in Coniferic are modified leaves, and the 

 carpellary scales modifications of the woody axis. According to our now 

 fully demonstrated theory, the leaves of Conifera; are free, and become fully 

 developed just in proportion to the weakness of the woody or axillary parts. 

 This law might be expected to show itself in force in the bracts of the cone, 

 as it is seen it really does in the specimens before us. 



I am often asked what influence this law of vigor, as modifying form, is to 

 have on our ideas of specific character? To me it seems the tendency will 

 be to make our recognition of distinct things clearer, rather than to confuse 

 them. As it is now, science on its present basis contradicts our senses. Every 

 one knows a larch, a spruce, a fir, or a cedar, almost instinctively at sight; 

 but no sooner were the rules of our best botanists applied to them, than no 

 one knows which is which, and they are all thrown together in one genus. 

 By pointing out the directions of change on one unvarying law, applicable 

 equally to a whole genus or natural order, certainly affinities must be brought 

 clearer and closer together, than by the present system of conjoining a few 

 special points, many of which have no physiological relation to one another. 



Sej)tember 7th. 

 Dr. Ruschenberger, Vice-President, in the Chair. 

 Twenty-one members present. 



Thomas Meehan said it was well known that all vegetable physiologists 

 taught there were two classes of buds in plants, one called adventitious buds 

 which had a kind of nomadic existence, springing anywhere from root or 

 branch in apparent defiance of law or order, — the other axillary buds which 

 were supposed to owe their origin to the leaf from the base of which they 

 spring. It was customary to speak of these as the " parent leaves of the 

 axillary buds." He would show that the leaf not only did not aid the axillary 

 bud formation, but was rather a foe to bud development. He exhibited vig- 

 orous shoots of the Kentucky Ooft'ee Tree, Honey Locust, Virginia Itea, Hick- 

 ories and Walnuts, showing what had either been entirely overlooked by 

 other botanists or passed over as of no importance, that there were in these 

 two or three buds instead of the usual single axillary bud, one above another 

 in a direct line, and that in all these instances the one the farthest removed 

 from the base of the leaf, and of course the one the least under its influence, 

 was the largest and best developed. These facts he had already incorporated 

 in a paper read before the American Association at Salem last mouth. He 



[August, 



