180 MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 



that the components of a flower exhibit a reversion to that 

 type from which the phasnogamic type has probably arisen — 

 a reversion which the laws of embryology would lead us to 

 look for where innutrition had arrested development. 



Hence, then, we may properly count those deviations of 

 structure which constitute inflorescence, as among the mor- 

 phological differentiations produced by local innutrition. I do 

 not mean that the detailed modifications which the essential 

 and subservient organs of fructification display, are thus 

 accounted for: we have seen reason to think them otherwise 

 caused. But I mean that the morphological characters which 

 distinguish gamogenetic axes in general from agamogenetic 

 axes, such as non-development of the internodes and dwarf- 

 ing of the foliar organs, are primarily results of failure in 

 the supply of some material required for further growth.* 



§ 241. Another trait which has to be noticed under this 

 head, is the spiral, or rather the helical, arrangement of 

 parts. The successive nodes of a phaenogam habitually bear 

 their appendages in ways implying more or less twist in the 

 substance of the axis ; and in climbing plants the twist is such 



* It is but just to the memory of Wolff, here to point out that he was 

 immensely in advance of Goethe in his rationale of these metamorphoses. 

 Whatever greater elaboration Goethe gave to the theory considered as an 

 induction, seems to me more than counter-balanced by the irrationality of his 

 deductive interpretation ; which unites mediaeval physiology with Platonic 

 philosophy. A dominant idea with him is that leaves exist for the purpose of 

 carrying off crude juices— that "as long as there are crude juices to be carried 

 off, the plant must be provided with organs competent to effect the task " ; 

 that while " the less pure fluids are got rid of, purer ones are introduced " 

 and that " if nourishment is withheld, that operation of nature (flowering) is 

 facilitated and hastened; the organs of the nodes (leaves) become more 

 refined in texture, the action of the purified juices becomes stronger, and the 

 transformation of parts having now become possible, takes place without 

 delay." This being the proximate explanation, the ultimate explanation is, 

 that Nature wishes to form flowers — that when a plant flowers it " attains the 

 end prescribed to it by nature " ; and that so " Nature at length attains her 

 object." Instead of vitiating his induction by a teleology that is as unwar- 

 ranted in its assigned object as in its assigned means, Wolff ascribes the 

 phenomena to a cause which, whether sufficient or not, is strictly scientific in 



