IN TWO SPECIES OF PASSIFLORA. 149 
embryo-sae, had constituted the parent cells of this misplaced pollen. The question, 
however, as to whether the embryo-sac had existed prior to the pollen appears to me 
simply of interest in reference to the stage of development which the ovule may have 
attained when the sexual divergence took place. It does not affect the main point—the 
fact of such sexual divergence, nor the further fact that pollen was formed at the expense 
of the tissues of the ovule at some stage of its development. 
The monstrosities I have now described to the Society are of much curious interest as 
examples of perverted anatomy, and they may possibly have some not unimportant bearing 
on points of homology; but I conceive that their paramount interest is physiological, 
both in the abstract in reference to the question of sex, and in their consequences as 
to the influence which such facts must have on the interpretation of cases, or supposed 
cases, of parthenogenesis in phanerogamic plants. 
For an ovule to develope pollen within its interior is equivalent to an ovum in an 
animal being converted into a capsule of spermatozoa. It is a conversion of germ into 
sperm, the most complete violation of the individuality and unity of sex; and it involves 
the idea of a mutation of gender. 
The occurrence of an antheroid ovule and a normal ovule on the same carpellary leaf 
realizes the simplest and the most absolute form of hermaphroditism. 
The bearing of these facts is of real practical importance in reference to the question of 
X virgin-reproduction in flowering plants. The circumstance that an ovule within an ovary 
may contain pollen in juxtaposition with another ovule normally formed, and capable of 
ripening into a mature seed, appears to me to cast a grave suspicion on many ofthe 
cases of reputed parthenogenesis in phanerogamie plants. It must surely be conceded 
(upon the facts which I believe I have now established) that no supposed case of partheno- 
genesis can be considered proved unless the ovules have been subjected to microscopical 
examination: I am not aware if such scrutiny has been made in any of the reputed cases. 
Gärtner, who disbelieved in the agamic reproduction of flowering plants, and who 
laboured to disprove the idea, applied the term “ crypto-hermaphroditism” to those 
abnormal combinations of the two sexes where, in a plant supposed to be female and 
unisexual, pollen has been developed in some unnatural and hidden situation. He fully 
understood how such fallacies were likely to occur and to mislead in a supposed case of 
virgin-reproduction. But he instanced none in which the term “ crypto-hermaphrodite "' 
is so applicable as to a case of polleniferous ovules. In my malformed Passionflower 
ovaries, the alteration in structure was in many instances so very slight and so little 
apparent that they would have been altogether overlooked but for the fact that other 
more distorted specimens had attracted attention; and yet these slightly altered ovaries 
contained ovules and other organs laden with pollen enough to impregnate an immense 
number of seeds. : : 
What shall be said, therefore, of those supposed cases of virgin-reproduction in which 
the observer was not even conscious of the possibility of this fallacy ? ; 5 
I would not, however, have it supposed that I deny parthenogenesis in phanerogamic 
Plants; I have not alluded to the question with that object. Some of the recorded 
examples are perhaps too well founded upon the evidence of unquestionable authority 
VOL. XXIV. x 
