294 THE FLOWER. 



greatly divergent, but are separated by the thickened connective, 

 which in this family is often larger than the cells. In the Sage, 

 the singular elongated connective sits astride the apex of the fil- 

 ament, and bears an anther-cell at each extremity ; one of which 

 is perfect and contains pollen, while the other is imperfect or abor- 

 tive. Illustrations of these diversities will be found under the Ord. 

 Labiatae. We have no room to pass in review even the more 

 common of the almost endless variations which the anther exhibits. 



530. As to its structure, each lobe of the full-grown anther con- 

 sists of an epidermal membrane, lined with a delicate fibrous tis- 

 sue, and surrounding a cavity filled with pollen. This fibrous 

 lining, a part of which is shown in Fig. 32, from the anther of 

 CobaBa, is composed of simple or branching attenuated threads or 

 bands, which formed the thickening deposit on the walls of large 

 parenchymatous cells ; all the membrane between the bands be- 

 coming obliterated as the anther approaches maturity, the latter 

 alone remain, as a set of delicate fibres. This fibrous layer grad- 

 ually diminishes in thickness as it approaches the line of dehis- 

 cence of the cell, and there it is completely interrupted.- These 

 very elastic and hygrometric threads lengthen or contract in differ- 

 ent ways, according as the anther is dry or moist ; which move- 

 ments, after the pollen has appropriated all the juices of the tissue, 

 aid in the disruption of the anther along the suture, and then favor 

 the egress of the pollen. The walls of many anthers are curved 

 outwards, or completely turned inside out, as in Grasses, by the 

 unlike hygrometric state of the external and the internal layers. 



531. Of all the floral organs, the anther shows least likeness to 

 a leaf. Nevertheless, the early development is nearly the same. 

 Like the leaf, the apex is earliest formed, appearing first as a solid 

 protuberance, and the anther is completed before the filament, 

 which answers to the leaf-stalk, makes its appearance. At first, 

 the anther is of a greenish hue, although at maturity the cells 

 assume a different color, more commonly yellow. A transverse 

 section of the forming anther shows four places in which the trans- 

 formation of the parenchyma into pollen commences, which an- 

 swer to the centre of the four divisions of the parenchyma of a 

 leaf, viz. the two sides of the blade, each distinguished into its 

 upper and its lower stratum. So that the anther is primarily and 

 typically four-celled ; each lobe being divided by a portion of un- 

 transformed tissue stretching from the connective to the opposite 



