74 MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 



much-diminished internode and a less-pronounced axillary 

 bud, as in Fig. 124. On approaching the flower, the 

 axillary bud disappears; and the segment is reduced to a 

 small foliar surface, with an internode which is in most 



cases very short if not absent, as in 125 and 126. In the 

 flower itself, axillary buds and internodes are both want- 

 ing: there remains only a foliar surface (127), which, 

 though often larger than the immediately preceding foliar 

 surface, shows failing nutrition by absence of chlorophyll. 

 And then, in the quite terminal organs of fructification (129), 

 we have the foliar part itself reduced to a mere rudiment. 

 Though these progressive degenerations are by no means 

 regular, being in many cases varied by adaptations to par- 

 ticular requirements, yet it cannot, I think, be questioned, 

 that the general relations are as described, and that they are 

 such as the hypothesis leads us to expect. Nor are 



we without a kindred explanation of certain remaining traits 

 of foliar organs in their least-developed forms. Petals, 

 stamens, pistils, &c., besides reminding us of the primordial 

 fronds by their diminished sizes, and by the want of those 

 several supplementary parts which the preceding segments 

 possess, also remind us of them by their histological charac- 

 ters: they consist of simple cellular tissue, scarcely at all 

 differentiated. The fructifying cells, too, which here make 

 their appearance, are borne in ways like those in which the 

 lower Acrogens bear them at the edge of the frond, or at 

 the end of a peduncle, or immersed in the general substance ; 

 as in Figs. 128 and 129. Nay, it might even be said that 



