THE FLOWERS. oT 
lamellose inside, spreading and recurved when the flower opens (Prare II, figs. 
6, 7, 8, 10 and 11), and are usually persistent even when the fruit is mature, i 
Neuter Plowers.—ln the female spadix the fertile flower is accompanied by & 
neuter one (Pr:rE I, fig. 107, and PrarE II, figs. 6, 7f) which is frequently very 
small and very soon deciduous, but not rarely is similar to a perfect male flower, 
though thinner and with attophied anthers and abortive ovary ; this is formed—as in 
the male flowers—of three very small bodies, the representatives of three carpels 
(Puate II, fig. 12”). The neuter flower is always inserted on the outer side of the 
involucre in the centre of the speclal area or niche which I have termed the 
areola of the neuter flower. 
The neuter flower is almost always sessile, but I have found that it is provided 
with a distinct stalk in OC. Henruanus and C. adspersus, In some species, as 
C. saliifolius and C. Rotang, the neuter flowers do not differ in appearance from the 
fertile male flowers, but I do not know if the pollen of their anthers be perfect and 
capable of fertilizing. In C. tenuis, C. Guruba and again in C, Delessertianus and 
C. Ridleyanus ihe neuter flowers are also well developed, and are only slightly smaller 
than the female ones; as they are only deciduous when the female flowers are on 
the point of expanding, the female spikelets immediately prior to the opening 
of the flowers have these arranged in four very distinct and almost similar series. 
From the manner in which the neuter flower is inserted outside the floral 
involucre and on account of the small axial part with which in a few cases it is 
furnished, we can readily recognise that, along with the corresponding female flower, 
it forms part of a very small secondary contracted spikelet. 
The neuter flower may therefore be considered to be a male flower which is 
rendered functionless by a retrograde process and becomes depauperated owing to 
the greater development of the fertile one or perhaps it may, from another point of 
view, be considered one that has never attained the full structure fitting it for repro- 
ductive functions. 
It happens sometimes in nature that certain structures, which have made ha 
appearance at an early date (in the evolutionary sense) under the stimulus of a definite 
need of the organism, and have been capable of fulfilling a definite function, later on, 
under altered conditions of existence, have become useless and have consequently 
been modified and reduced by atrophy, but still prsiest, possibly because the disuse 
began to be experienced when the malleability of the organism was already greatly 
diminished. All this is in accordance with my theory of variability restrained by 
the force of heredity in the plasmatical era.* 
These neuter flowers therefore appear to me to be a striking proof of the 
presence in an organism of useless structures that do not now exercise any function, 
or that perhaps never even in bygone ‘times exercised any function. 
The neuter flowers of Calami usually never open; they have stamens and an 
ovary that, according to the species, are mure or less atrophied, and that are 
deciduous before the fall of the female flowers. There seem however to be a few 
exceptions to this rule, as for example in C. Grifithianns (PrarE IL, fig. w whero 
| ibe the ealyx and corolla apparently expand, | : 
pacio anui lay cack Bei Nis Pene d Bemesdoteit, coe 
+ 
eel 
sad 
dus. dios, Dor, Gand. Casoria Vi, X1: ^ —— 077 
