40 ON THE AWNS OF NEPAUL BARLEY. 
The inferences which seem to arise from the result of these observa- 
tions, may possibly tend to throw light upon the conditions under 
which unsymmetrical flowers have originated. Thus, in the well-known 
Pelorial form of an Antirrhinum, where there is a return to regularity, 
we may suppose the doin *axes of development," if we may 
thus consider the several vascular bundles which proceed to the 
separate parts of the flowers, are here symmetrically arranged round 
the main axis. Every departure from such symmetry in the position 
of these axes would introduce irregularity in the combinations between 
the separate parts to which they give rise, and thus one-fifth, two- 
fifths, &c., of the flower might become irregular in consequence. By 
the partial separation or branching of a main axis, supporting single 
flowers whose parts may happen to be normally some multiple of either 
three or five, a sort of ** macle ” flower (to borrow a term from crystallo- 
graphy) might result, in which the parts should be arranged in fours, 
&e. Among many examples I have specimens of Fritillaria Meleagris 
in which the peduncles have branched, and so bear either two or three 
separate flowers; and, in some cases, these branches are so combined 
that two flowers have more or less coalesced, and the result has been 
a “macle” flower with two pistils, but fewer than a double number 
of stamens or segments of the perianths. May not some such con- 
dition be the more ordinary state of certain flowers, as those of Paris 
quadrifolia; or even of the flowers of certain groups, as in Orwcifere ? 
The chief objection to such a view appears to lie in the different 
angular intervals at which similar parts would now be arranged round 
the main axis. But possibly some readjustment would here take 
place, just as we find to be the case in flowers whose parts are 
variable. 
