PHANEROGAMIA : FLOWERS. 



361 



contending, whether the human heart contains four chambers or only 

 one, and how little skill is required to make a transverse section of an 

 anther in a rather young bud ! In the Composites (fig. 206.), there are 

 four-celled anthers in which the valves of the hinder loculi are glued 

 together, and commonly burst open at each side by a longitudinal slit. 



Almost every patch of turf affords material for the investigation of 

 this condition in Bellis perennis : in the Zinnias, Sun-flowers, &c., 

 merely a tolerable lens is required to make the matter out readily, and yet 

 in so simple a thing as this Link says * : " Originally the anthers are 

 closed, and exhibit a five- (instead of twenty-) chambered tube, then 

 the inner borders (which are these?) separate, and the tube becomes 

 one-chambered." I think it would be impossible to find a notion more 

 contradictory of nature, and to represent it more confusedly. 



The anthers of most plants, as has been said, have originally four 

 loculi, not, as is usually said, on account of the incurvation of the 

 borders of the valves, but because they secrete four cords of cellular 

 tissue for the formation of the pollen. From this rule the (Enotherece, 

 in particular, do not deviate, though Link ascribes to them anthers with 

 only two loculi from the very first. So also the anthers of Malvacece 

 are not one-celled on each side, but two-celled. Still less are the anthers 

 of the Balsaminece altogether and in every case one-celled, as Link 

 says f, but perfectly four-celled. Of Canna, he says, the anthers ap- 

 pear to be contracted from a two-celled anther, as the suture is com- 

 pound. The fact is, that in Canna, Maranta, Calathea, Phrynium, 

 &c., the anther is perfected only on one side of the connective, but here 

 regularly two-celled, with a perfectly simple and usual suture, and a 

 septum which, according to specific variations, projects more or less, as 

 a ridge into the theca ; in the Scitaminece, in the strictest sense (R. 

 Brown), on the contrary, two loculi are perfected on each side of the 

 connective, and in these also the septum projects inwards into the thecse, 

 sometimes more (Hedychium coccineum), sometimes less (Curcuma aro- 

 ma tied}. The remarkable structure of the valves in the Lauracece (and 

 in the Berberacece it is similar) may readily be understood from fig. 208. 



208 



Elem. Phil. Bot. ed. 2. p. 179. 



f Loc. cit. 



08 Laurus carolinensis. A, Stamen of the outer circle : a, filament ; b, anterior and 

 lower c, upper and posterior pollen-chambers (loculi) ; d, the glands analogous to 

 stipules. B, Stamen of the inner circle ; o, filament ; , l w er posterior ; , upper 

 anterior loculi of the loculi. C, Cross-section of the anther (B) in the level of . 

 A Cross-section of the same in the level of 2". 



