423 
. Note on the Structure of the Anther. 
By Daniel Oliver, F.L.S., Professor of Botcmy in University College, London 
Read November 7th, 1861. 
GERANIUM growing in my garden, apparently the Common Meadow Crane's-bill 
((?. pratense), has borne during the past autumn very numerous abnormal flowers. 
Many of these exhibited the stamens in various degrees of retrogression, from tolerably 
perfect, anther-bearing, to petaloid and anantherous forms. I examined some of the 
flowers while they were fresh, and sketched a curious form of anther which they pre- 
sented, but did not until late in the season (September) undertake a more complet< 
examination of a larger series ; and then, unfortunately, the remaining ones were withered 
and decaying. However, I was still able to make several drawings, exhibiting different 
stages in the development of polliniferous lobes, and I now have the honour to lay some 
of these before the Society. I am induced to this because these imperfect anthers seem 
to me to afford some additional evidence upon an obscure point in the morphology of the 
staminal leaf, especially interesting, being derived from an order seldom presenting gra- 
duated series between the floral whorls, and also one in which the anthers are, normally, 
versatile*. 
I am not aware that any clear view has been as yet generally accepted as to the mor- 
phological import of the sutures or lines of dehiscence of the anther-cells. I may be 
wrong in supposing the matter to be yet imperfectly understood ; but, at any rate, the 
explanation of the structure of the anther, as given in the text-books on morphology 
which I have seen, appears to me to be unsatisfactory, and I do not recollect to have met 
with any evidence bearing upon the point derived from t eratological facts, further than 
that furnished by H. v. Mohl in his important essay, " Beobachtungen iiber die Urn- 
wandlung von Antheren in Carpelle"t, published in 1836; and by Neumann, "Ueber 
Anthers anticse und posticse, und deren Uebergange in einander " t . M. Gris, in 
c Annales des Sciences'§, describes and figures imperfect stamens from the " Bose verte" 
which correspond very nearly indeed with those which I found in the Geranium ; but 
he does not enter upon the question of their morphological bearing further than merely 
to point out the confirmation which they afford to the opinion entertained by botanists, 
(Linn. Trans, xxiii. 359) 
orders in which median prolification has been observed. In many of the flowers of this Geranium the axis was pro 
bearing 
The abnormal 
formed 
Vermisch. Schrift. p. 28, and tab. i. ; also a translation in Ann. Sc. Nat. 
ser. 2. viii. p. 50. 
: 
§ 
xxiii 
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