310 Prof. Ch. Morren on the Morphology of the Ascidia. 



all the leaflets of an impari-pinnate leaf cohere with the ex- 

 ception of the odd one, a thing which is very possible ; this 

 condition, with a winged petiole, will represent the first mor- 

 phological phase of Nepenthes, where the operculum will be 

 the free leaflet. Mr. Lindley supposed that the wing of Dio~ 

 naea was folded back to cohere, so that the upper had become 

 the outer surface of the pitcher of Nepenthes, This appears to 

 me contrary to all analogy. I said above that I possessed two 

 monstrous ascidia. One is on Vinca rosea, the other on a 

 Polygonatum multiflorum. Now", upon these two ascidia, it is 

 the blade which has cohered and not the petiole which is be- 

 come hollow, and the cohesion has taken place in such a man- 

 ner that the under surface of the blade is become the outer of 

 the pitcher and the upper the inner surface. The pitcher of 

 Polygonatum resembles that of a Sarracenia so closely that it 

 might be easily mistaken for it. 



This mode of cohesion and this direction of the folding 

 were all to be foreseen. Wolff, Goethe, DeCandoUe, and 

 Turpin have all proved by the unitarian theory of morphology, 

 that for a carpel to be produced, the leaf, the generating ele- 

 ment of all the appendicular organs, is not differently circum- 

 stanced, that it coheres above and not below; and thence arises 

 that the ovules are produced by the secreting surface of the 

 leaf, the upper surface, while the stomata are on the outside of 

 the ovarium, and while the absorption is carried on by this 

 same outer surface. The same philosophic mode of reasoning 

 has proved the anther also to be the blade of a leaf cohering 

 above and producing (this antherian leaf) by its secreting sur- 

 face (or surface of production, which is one and the same 

 thing) the pollen, as upon several anthers there are stomata 

 on the under surface, that is to say, on the outer surface 

 of the leaf which produced them. 



It is on this account that Link^s idea of the ascidium o 

 Nepenthes being a floriform organ, appeared to me fruitful in 

 consequences, although they seem as yet to have struck no one. 



From the manner of thinking above expressed it will now 

 be perceived that the functions of the ascidia are quite natu- 

 rally explained, and as simple deductions from a well-esta- 

 blished fact. Indeed up to the half of the pitcher it exhibits 



