BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 67 



That fusion is an important factor of variation in nature 

 could, I think, be easily verifiable. It is certain that many of the 

 large -flowered Auriculas exhibited are a congenital fusion of two, 

 with a smaller number of parts. This ought to be verifiable where 

 so many Auriculas are raised from seed, which are the result of 

 crossings. We would then have moral conviction made certain by 

 verification. 



What we have to do is to leave dogmas to the one side, and 

 " look at facts straight in the face, and find out what they mean." 



The fusion of cell to cell, hair to hair, leaf to leaf, bud to bud, 

 petal to petal, flower to flower, ovary to ovary, has, there can be 

 little doubt, been one great factor in the modification of plants 

 throughout nature. 



Indeed, it seems possible that this same phenomenon of fusion 

 may help us to explain other more recondite phenomena. 



If two monads of great microscopical minuteness can fuse to 

 form a larger monad, with the germs of each intermixed in the 

 fused bigger monad, there appears no good reason to deny the 

 possibility of some of the germs fusing also. Dallinger and Drys- 

 dale have not seen any of the germs fuse, but they have seen the 

 parent monads, presumably male and female, fuse. The fusion of 

 two germs, one from the mother and one from the father, would 

 naturally develop a comhination of features in the progeny, while 

 those that remained unfused, would develop features of either the 

 one or the other parent. We know that two ovules can fuse ; 

 that, as a matter of fact, two microscopic monads have been seen 

 to fuse; we have therefore to extend, in imagination, this 

 phenomenon to the germs of monads. It requires only an exten- 

 sion of inference. 



I have made a series of observations on a single variety of 

 crimson Pyrethrum, which are very suggestive and instructive. I 

 shall place rough drawings of the phenomena observed before the 

 reader, so that he may see how easy it may have been for species 

 with small capitula to have originated, through fusion, species, 

 with larger and larger capitula.^ There is no good reason to 

 suppose that a large sunflower, could not have been produced from 

 a flower as small as the common daisy, or as small as that of 



* Vide Dr. Masters " Veg. Teratology," p. 38. 



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