422 MISCELLANEOUS, 1850-1860 



design in the construction of compound organs. I had a 

 talk with Lindley the other day about axial placentation, 

 and he immediately knocked me down with Schleiden's 

 argument derived from the ovule of Taxus being absolutely 

 solitary and terminating a branch this vexed my soul ; 

 for I confess to the most perfect distrust of Schleiden, which 

 leads me to forget his writings, and I did, when reminded 

 of it, remember his dwelling on that very point. After two 

 days I modestly ventured to examine Taxus myself and 

 behold, I found two ovules in every one of the first 3 

 buds I opened, and neither terminal, and when only one 

 occurred it was lateral. Each had a rudimentary scale 

 like ovarium. So much for that argument. On the other 

 hand I can quite understand such a congenital arrest of 

 organs in Taxus as should result in an apparent terminal 

 ovule, without making a special law in the Vegetable King- 

 dom to account for it. I have also a monstrous Primula 

 with parietal placenta and ovules ; the Pink or Carnation 

 is another common case in point and so on, all new facts 

 tend to reduce the exceptions to the carpellary theory and 

 none cut the other way. 



I have commenced the V.D.L. Flora, and find it my fate 

 to destroy species as I go on, and the more carefully I examine 

 the more to fell ; on the other hand I am extremely gratified 

 with the multitude of good, new and undescribed species 

 in the Australian Flora. 



Passages may be quoted from two letters to Henslow 

 which are too long to give in full. Henslow, struck by 

 an anomalous structure in Nelumbium and several curious 

 points new to him, and unaware of the light thrown upon 

 these points by many observers, had founded an explana- 

 tion of them on the structure as it was before him, and 

 had assigned not only Nelumbium, but Nymphaea, to the 

 Monocotyledons. ^ Hooker had lately examined the germina- 

 tion of all the genera, and his lively criticism was directed, 

 not against the facts observed, anomalous though they 

 were, but against the reasoning, where there was so much 

 evidence, direct and indirect, to be reckoned with on the 

 other side. 



