M. Duchartre on the Organogeny of the Malvacee. 245 
a plane anterior to that of the filaments, alternating with their 
five groups,—lobes which we observe in many of the Malvaceae, 
although they are barely perceptible, and even are entirely want- 
ing in many others. MM. Dunal and Moquin-Tandon recog- 
nised them, and considered them as the border of a five-lobed 
disc. But the nature of the disc is far from rigorously defined, 
and in many cases this term exactly applies to abortive whorls, 
as may be seen in many Vinifere, in the Myrsinee, &c.,—families 
which are equally remarkable by the opposition of their stamens 
to the petals, to which they are equal in number. M. Duchartre 
mentions this example of the Myrsinee as exhibiting exactly 
the symmetry of the Malvaceae, with this difference, that a single 
stamen only corresponds to each petal. We do not agree with 
him in this opinion, but think that in the Myrsinee there are 
two whorls of stamens independent of the corolla, the external 
or that alternating with the petal bemg metamorphosed or abor- 
tive. This appears to be demonstrated by the flowers of Theo- 
phrasta, or better still by Jacquinia. 
The author, arriving at the pistil of the Malvacee, finds in their 
different genera variations which are sufficiently considerable 
to establish four different categories, which he successively ex- 
amines. In the first the quinary symmetry is at once apparent, 
and the five carpels differ but little m their mode of development 
from the views and theories generally adopted. In fact, we know 
that each carpel is considered as a leaf folded on itself, and that 
numerous organogenic observations exhibit this organ to us in 
the form of a minute scale which soon becomes concave internally, 
then tends more and more to close up by the approximation of 
the borders of the concavity, the adhesion of which completes 
the formation of the ovary and forms a perfectly closed cavity, m 
which one or more ovules subsequently become developed. Now, 
imagine five of these scales or plates soldered together by their la- 
teral surfaces, we then have the first condition of the pistil of Hi- 
biscus. That will be a small border having five angles, which alter- 
nately project and recede internally ; the projecting angles corre- 
spond to the borders of five carpels, approximated in pairs, and 
these angles projecting more and more and converging, terminate 
by uniting so as to form a quinquelocular ovary. But at a still 
earlier period, before the internal projections were marked, we 
had a pentagonal border which soon becomes festooned by five 
tubercles, the first indications of the styles. 
In a second category, Malope for mstance, we also observe 
a pentagonal border, the five angles of which are opposite to the 
petals, and consequently correspond to the place which five nor- 
mal carpels should occupy. That border of the pentagon which 
is first united sends out a series of rounded tubercles, which sub- 
