210 Br Daubcny on the Writings and 



either state of things one of two results will occur, either that 

 the organ is so diminished, as to be incapable of performing 

 its proper office, or that it is entirely obliterated. In the 

 former case it often happens, by a beautiful provision of na- 

 ture, that it is transformed into some other organ, and dis- 

 charges certain other functions. Thus branches, petioles of 

 leaves, petals of flowers, and other parts, degenerate, some- 

 times into thorns, and at other times into tendrils ; thus the 

 branches, becoming succulent, acquire the appearance, and 

 perform the functions, of leaves ; thus that which is essen- 

 tially nothing more than one of the envelopes of the kernel of 

 the peach, becoming pulpy, is converted into a wholesome kind 

 of fruit. 



" The third cause of deviation from the accustomed stan- 

 dard is the mutual adhesion of certain parts, a process similar 

 to that which we produce artificially in the operation of graft- 

 ing, and which often takes place also under natural circum- 

 stances. 



" It is, therefore, quite intelligible that this same union of 

 parts should also be produced in consequence of their natural 

 proximity. Thus, if two ovaries grow very near each other, 

 it is obvious that they will have a tendency to cohere. M. 

 Decandolle, therefore, contends, that the corolla and the 

 calyx are in fact compound organs, made up of a certain num- 

 ber of petals and of sepals which have grown together, that 

 a seed-vessel is a congeries of as many distinct organs as there 

 are cells, and that a flower is no assemblage of individuals 

 clustered round a common centre." 



The sagacity of our countryman, Robert Brown, had al- 

 ready led him to point out this principle, so far as relates to 

 one portion of the subject, for in his Prodromus Florae Novas 

 Hollandiae, published so long ago as 1810, he pronounces, that 

 all multilocular capsules are composed of a number of thecae 

 equal in number to the divisions of which they consist, and 

 differ from each other only in the degrees and modes of their 

 cohesion or separation. 



He also, in his observations on the " Natural Family called 

 Compositie," published in the Linnaean Transactions for 1816, 

 between the publication of the first and second editions of 



