Chap. X. 



SEXUAL RELATIONS OP PLANTS. 



413 



evil, the greatest of all to any organism, would have 

 been much lessened by their becoming hermaphrodites, 

 though with the contingent disadvantage of frequent 

 self-fertilisation. By what graduated steps an herma- 

 phrodite condition was acquired we do not know. But 

 we can see that if a lowly organised form, in which 

 the two sexes were represented by somewhat different 

 individuals, were to increase by budding either before 

 or after conjugation, the two incipient sexes would 

 be capable of appearing by buds on the same stock, 

 as occasionally occurs with various characters at the 

 present day. The organism would then be in a 

 monoecious condition, and this is probably the first 

 step towards hermaphroditism ; for if very simple 

 male and female flowers on the same stock, each con- 

 sisting of a single stamen or pistil, were brought close 

 together and surrounded by a common envelope, in 

 nearly the same manner as with the florets of the 

 Composite, we should have an hermaphrodite flower.* 

 There seems to be no limit to the changes which 

 organisms undergo under changing conditions of life ; 

 and some hermaphrodite plants, descended as I am led 

 to believe from aboriginally diclinous plants, have had 

 their sexes again separated. That this has occurred, 

 we may infer from the presence of rudimentary stamens 

 in the flowers of some individuals, and of rudimentary 

 pistils in the flowers of other individuals, for example 

 in Lychnis dioica. But a conversion of this kind will | 



* Mr. "W. Thiselton Dyer, In a 

 very able review of this work 

 ('Nature,' Feb. 1877, p. 329), 

 takes an exactly opposite view, 

 and advances weighty arguments 

 in favour of the belief that all 

 plants were aboriginally her- 

 maphrodites. I will only remark 

 that I had in my mind organ- 



isms much lower in the scale thau 

 Ferns or Selaginella. Mr. Dyer 

 adds that my notion of very 

 simple male and female flowers 

 being brought together and sur- 

 rounded by a common envelope, 

 offers very considerable morpho- 

 logical difficulties. 



