222 PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES ON 



The parenchyma of the leaf or frond — the mesophyl — appears 

 to be of little consequence morphologically,* that is, it easily 

 aborts or disappears, without influencing the veins or branchlets 

 of the leaf-stem, which appear to be of all importance, because it 

 is these which carry the nourishing fluid in a complex plant. I 

 prefer to look upon pollen grains, and the nucellus of ovules, as 

 homologous with spores, and these with buds, the spore-cases or 

 sporangia acting as protecting covers to the spores. 



Asa Gray, at p. 255, gives examples of deviations from the 

 typical two-celled anther, as if anthers must necessarily have 

 been inherited from some one typical form. What is called a 

 typical form means a form that belongs to the majority of 

 flowering plants. But that may only mean that in remote 

 ancestral times there were plants with this collateral variation, 

 viz., of a two-celled anther. The plant owning such an anther 

 may have had some other advantage in the great battle of life, and 

 may have been selected for generations, and survived to transmit 

 many and many descendants with the same inherited character of 

 a two-celled anther. It does not at all mean that there was some 

 fixed law of anther evolution, of which the type was two-celled, 

 any more than, supposing the survivors to have had a one-celled 

 anther, we would be justified in calling this typical. 



The variations in development must have been infinite, and the 

 further back we go in time the more we find these variations 

 running into fewer streams, from which our variations of to-day 

 have been derived, each generation inheriting a great deal from 

 its ancestors, and evolving some deviation of its own. For 

 instance, to borrow an example from the animal kingdom, just 

 see how stubborn the character of seven vertebrae in the neck is. 

 It runs through the whole of the mammal section, with the fewest 

 exceptions. While, on the other hand, see how much variation is 

 admissible in the organs which serve immediately to adapt the 

 individual to its surroundings. Just see what difference there is 

 between the nose of a gorilla and that of an elephant. Another 

 instance — just consider how much variation the fruit of the Citrus 

 has undergone to suit itself to the tastes, fancies, and wants of 

 man, while the leaf for which he cares little has taken its chance, 



• Beyond being the atrophied representative of the original reproductive 

 cells. 



