120 REVIEWS. 



the term ; " — unless, indeed, morphology relates simply to 

 form in the lowest sense, to mere shape, arbitrarily viewed, — 

 which would belittle the subject down to mere terminology, 

 and empty that of all scientific interest. If the comparison 

 even of a perfoliate or clasping with a cordate leaf, or of 

 membranaceous or coriaceous with thickened leaves, such as 

 those of a Houseleek, a Meseinbryanthemum, and an Aloe, 

 falls within the province of morphology, surely so also must 

 the comparison of an ordinary leaf with a cotyledon, with a 

 bulb-scale, a bud-scale, and no less with a sepal, a petal, a 

 carpel, etc. In the latter we merely trace morphological 

 relations of the very same kind somewhat further and higher. 

 The relation of a leaf as foliage to the scale of a bud, or to 

 the thorn of a Barberry, is clearly of the same category as its 

 relation to a sepal or a petal, — the latter, as we regard it, 

 bringing in no new idea, and requiring no new point of view. 



Next, Quincuncial imbrication is defined by Mr. Bentham 

 to be that arrangement in which " one petal is outside, an ad- 

 joining one wholly inside, the three others intermediate and 

 overlapping on one side." But why give this name to a mixed 

 form, to that which is merely convolute aestivation deranged 

 by one of the five petals getting both edges under ? And why 

 change the uniform usage from De Candolle's " Theorie Ele- 

 mentaire," if not earlier, down to the present time, which de- 

 fines the quincuncial mode as having two members exterior, 

 two interior, and one with one edge overlapping its neighbor 

 and the other overlapped ; an arrangement which especially 

 merits a distinguishing name, since it is the normal imbrication 

 in a pentamerous perianth, answering as it does to two fifths 

 phyllotaxis. So that current usage and reason tell against 

 the innovation. 



In the third place, we are equally inclined to demur to the 

 proposed modifications of the sense of the terms perigynous 

 and epigynous (paragraph 140), Mr. Bentham restricting the 

 former to those cases in which the petals, etc., are adnate to 

 a perfectly free calyx, as in the Cherry, and applying the 

 latter in cases where the calyx, equally bearing the petals, etc., 

 is adnate even merely to the base of the ovary, if only the 



