MEMOIR OF PTRAMUS DE CANDOLLE. 277 



example or two will suffice. If we take the fruit of the common 

 horse-chesnut, we shall find but three seeds at most, sometimes but a 

 single one; but on recurring to the flower we shall see three cells, and 

 two seeds in each cell, that is to say, six seeds. The fruit of the oak, 

 the acorn, exhibits in all cases but one seed; and here we see the 

 primitive type altered. But in the flower of the same tree the ovary 

 has always six ovules, and here we have the primitive type re-dis- 

 covered. 



The theory of De Candolle reveals a new world to the observer. In 

 a group of plants whose corolla is polypetalous, should an ordinary 

 naturalist find one whose corolla is monopetalous, he would probably 

 rest satisfied with having verified the fact; but with the naturalist 

 inspired by theory, inquiry commences where it terminates with the 

 other. Such an one sees, in the species which he is comparing, the 

 consolidated corolla occupy the place of the corolla with several petals; 

 he finds the ribs (nervures) of the former correspond with the divisions 

 of the latter; he reverts to an earlier stage of the flower, and seeking 

 this consolidated corolla in the bud, he there finds it composed of 

 several pieces; and thus the profound analogy of the group, masked by 

 the soldering of the petals in one species, reappears in all its entirety. 



What De Candolle calls degenerescence constitutes, when taken in an 

 inverse order, the metamorphosis of Goethe. The latter, following an 

 ascending scale, sees the leaf metamorphosed into the calyx, the calyx 

 into the corolla, the petals into stamens, the stamens into pistils, 

 ovary, and fruit. De Candolle, pursuing the opposite course, sees 

 fruit, ovary, and pistil degenerate into the stamen, the stamen into the 

 petal, the corolla into the calyx, the divers parts of the calyx into 

 leaves. Thus our double flowers are for the most part but the result 

 of the transformation of the stamens into petals, as in that most beau- 

 tiful of all transformations which changes the simple flower of the 

 eglantine into the many-leaved rose of our gardens. While meta- 

 morphosis, taken in the sense of Goethe, evolves, so to say, from the 

 leaf all the parts of the flower, degenerescence, in the sense of De 

 Candolle, brings all the parts of the flower back to the leaf. One of 

 these facts proves the other; and the theory of Goethe, under a proper 

 point of view, is but a part, though an admirable part, of the theory 

 of De Candolle. 



It was long ago said, and with reason, that books also have their 

 destiny. When Goethe, towards the close of the last century, gave 

 his doctrine to the public, the poet damaged the botanist; the fame 

 of the author of Werther and Faust caused the more modest merit of 

 the author of the Metamorphosis of Plants to be overlooked. When 

 De Candolle published his theory in 1813, he was far from Paris, in 

 an obscure province, and his book succeeded but slowly, almost 

 imperceptibly, in attracting general attention. It was, in fact, nearly 

 twenty years later, and only when a dispute between two eminent 

 rivals had carried the discussion into the halls of this Academy, that 

 public opinion learned at last to comprehend the force and weight of 

 the new ideas. 



Yet why not confess it ? Without doubt, the new spirit of the 



