238 EVOLUTION 



which the beginner in flower dissection is apt 

 to forget altogether. This, however, may be 

 easily made out as a distinct case, in the butter- 

 cup, or best of all, in the magnolia, and the 

 sepals and petals, the stamens and carpels, 

 may all be seen to arise upon this in ascending 

 order, like the young crowded leaves of a 

 vegetative bud. This simple (" hypogynous ") 

 arrangement, however, goes farther in the 

 (" perigynous ") strawberry, where, instead 

 of a short conical shoot, we have now the axis 

 disk-shaped, recalling the composite head; 

 while even the hollow fig finds its parallel 

 in the many flowers which, like rose or 

 daffodil, have become " epigynous," i. e. with 

 their ovaries, now sunk at the bottom of a cup, 

 the arrested and overgrown apex. Passing 

 now to forms so utterly distinct as the fungi, 

 we find the same process repeating itself, the 

 essential reproductive organs sinking from 

 cone to disk, and thence into cup or pouch, 

 like fig and rose, indeed closing up completely. 

 Now, the farther we go in our studies of 

 flower anatomy, the more we find of this 

 subordination of the vegetative life by the 

 reproductive ; witness the reduction of the 

 number of petals, stamens and carpels from 

 indefinite to few. See, however, what all 

 this amounts to. All these changes and 



