io THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS. 



that discovered by Wolf and subsequently redis- 

 covered by Goethe, after whose name it is usually 

 called ; for of course, as in all such cases, the greater 

 man's fame has swallowed up the fame of the lesser. 

 Goethe held that all the parts of the flower were 

 really modified leaves, and that a gradual transition 

 could be traced between them, from the ordinary 

 leaf, through the stem-leaf and the bract, to the 

 sepal, the petal, the stamen, and the ovary or carpel. 

 Now, if we look at most modern flowers, such a 

 transition can undoubtedly be observed ; and some- 

 times it is very delicately graduated, so that you can 

 hardly say where each sort of leaf merges into the 

 next. But, unfortunately for the truth of the theory 

 as ordinarily understood, we now know that in the 

 earliest flowers there were no petals or sepals, but 

 that primitive flowering plants had simply leaves on 

 the one hand, and stamens and ovules on the other. 

 The oldest types of flowers at present surviving are 

 certain Gymnosperms, such as the cycads, of which 

 the well -known Zamias of our conservatories may be 

 regarded as good examples. These have only naked 

 ovules on the one hand and clusters of stamens in a 

 sort of cone on the other. The Gymnosperms are 

 geologically earlier than any other flowering plants. 

 But, if petals and sepals are later in origin (as we 

 know them to be) than stamens and carpels, we can 

 hardly say that they mark the transition from one 

 form to the other, any more than we can say that 

 Gothic architecture marks the transition from the 

 Egyptian style to the classical Greek. It is not 

 denied, indeed, that the stamen and the ovary are 

 themselves by origin modified leaves that part of 



