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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



quite as functionless as are the cilia on the leaf margin of our 

 common barberry. These cilia we saw good reason for believing 

 to be rudimentary spines. The supposition that the stamen ap- 

 pendages are degenerate nectar glands would seem to be scarcely 

 less probable, in spite of our inability to find as full a series of 

 intermediate stages. For it should be remembered that the time 



FIG. 14. BERBEKIS AQUIFOLIUM. Stamen showing appendages (A). 

 FIG. 15. LINDERA BENZOIN. Stamen showing nectar glands (N). 

 FIG. 16. BERBERIS VULGARIS. Petal showing nectar glands (N). 



which has elapsed since the development of the floral peculiari- 

 ties here considered is surely much greater than in the case of the 

 foliar modifications, and consequently it would be strange indeed 

 if the intermediate stages had not disappeared. 



Although, in regard to the evolution of the floral organs, 

 there is so much less opportunity than with the vegetative sys- 

 tem to test the validity of our conjectures, yet it may not be 

 entirely profitless to follow such clews as are available, and en- 

 deavor to reconstruct hypothetically the main features of those 

 more primitive flowers from which the present barberry type 

 was derived. 



A multitude of stamens and pistils is generally recognized as 

 characteristic of primitive flowers ; * hence, we shall probably be 

 not far wrong in considering the remote ancestor of the barber- 

 ries and their kin to be in this regard very like a marsh mari- 

 gold (Caltha), although doubtless less conspicuous, and with the 

 parts more definitely arranged. As it is a very general charac- 

 teristic of berberidaceous flowers that the parts are in whorls of 

 three, we should expect this to be the case with the common 

 ancestor. Accordingly, we arrive at a generalized type of flower, 

 the structure of which may be expressed diagrammatically as in 



* In the Lardizabalacece, an exotic group which some botanists consider to be a subfamily 

 of Berberidacece, the pistils are from three to nine in number. 



