240 M.Duchartre on the Organogeny of the Malvacez. 
XXIX.—Report on a memoir by M. P. Duchartre, entitled ‘ Ob- 
servations on the Organogeny of the Flower of the Malvacex.’ 
By MM. Broneniart, Ricnarp and DE Jussizu*. 
We have been requested by the Academy to give an account of 
the botanical memoir presented by M. Duchartre, and bearing 
the above title. 
M. Duchartre has distinguished himself by various investiga- 
tions, several of which have had the same object as the present, 
but related to different plants ; many of them have been submitted 
to the Academy and have received its approbation. These re- 
searches may serve to explain several particular questions relating 
to the vegetables to which they refer ; but in addition to their m- 
terest in this point of view, they are of much greater importance 
for the solution of general questions. We shall commence by 
giving a sketch of them, and enunciating the problems to which 
they relate, before detailing the results at which the author has 
arrived in seeking for their solution. 
It is well known that botanists agree pretty generally in con- 
sidering that the different parts of a flower represent so many 
more or less modified leaves. These leaves, which constitute the 
segments of the calyx and of the corolla, the stamens and the parts 
of the pistil, are sometimes independent of each other as the true 
leaves generally are, sometimes coherent by a portion of their 
margins or their surfaces. DeCandolle, who has contributed so 
much to the establishment of this theory, has proposed the word 
soudure (confluence) to express this union, which implies that the 
parts were primarily separate before being thus combined. How- 
ever, he admitted that the separation could only have existed 
prior to that period at which the parts become accessible to ob- 
servation, and then this adhesion is called by him predisposed. 
But that which he had not been able directly to establish, others 
might anticipate doing, when the perfection of instruments and 
methods of observation had removed the barrier by which he was 
checked. This is, in fact, what has been accomplished. With 
the aid of the microscope, the development of the organs has 
been traced from their first appearance ; that is to say, from the 
moment at which they separate from the axis to which they are 
attached, and appear constituted simply by the aggregation of a 
few cells. 
Now, are these primary rudiments constantly or only occa- 
sionally independent of each other? Upon this point observers 
are not agreed. 
M. Schleiden speaks decidedly for the primitive independence 
* Translated from the Comptes Rendus for August 15, 1845, 
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