PROLIFICATION OF THE INFLORESCENCE. 103 
buds on the inflorescence. It must be distinguished 
from virescence, or the mere green colour of the floral 
organs, and from chloranthy, in which all or the greater 
portion of the parts of the flower are replaced by leaves. 
Prolification is, in fact, a formation of supernumerary 
buds, leafy or floral, as the case may be, these buds 
being sessile or stalked, the ordinary buds beige not 
necessarily changed. Prolification of the inflorescence, 
like the other varieties, admits of subdivision, not only 
according to the fohar or floral nature of the bud, but 
according to its position, terminal or median and lateral. 
Terminal prolification of the inflorescence, whether 
leafy or floral, is hardly to be looked upon in the lght of 
a malformation’ seeing that a similar condition is so 
commonly metwith normally, as in Epacris, Metrosideros, 
Bromelia, Eucomis, &c., wherein the leafy axis projects 
beyond the inflorescence proper; or as in Primula im- 
perialis, m which plant, as also in luxuriant forms of 
P. sinensis, tier after tier of flowers are placed in succes- 
sion above the primary umbel. Nevertheless, when we 
meet with such conditions in plants which, under 
ordinary circumstances, do not manifest them, we must 
consider them as coming under the domain of teratology. 
Median foliar prolification of the inflorescerce is frequently 
met with in Conifere, and has of late attracted unwonted 
attention from the researches of Caspary, Baillon, and 
others, on the morphology of these plants. The scales 
and bracts of the cone in these abnormal specimens 
frequently afford transitional forms of the greatest 
value in enabling morphologists to comprehend the 
real nature of the floral structure. It would be irre- 
levant here to enter into this subject; suffice it merely 
to say that an examination of very numerous specimens 
of this kind, in the common larch and in Cryptomeria 
Japonica, has enabled me to verify nearly the whole of 
Caspary’s observations. A similar prolongation of the 
axis occurred in some of the male catkins of Castanea 
* “ Diaphysis inflorescentiarum,”” Engelmann, ‘ De Anthol.,’ § 85. 
