316 CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING 



bution of the nutriment, as affected by internal or external causes, and 

 that wbile some natural families have an exceedingly strong tendency 

 to irregularity, and others hardly ever indulge in it, there are some of 

 intermediate character, in which a change is easily effected, and ab- 

 normal conditions often occur, fully explaining the nature of the phe- 

 nomenon. 



The origin of all the parts which unite to form the flower from 

 leaves is now a well established principle, and the student is from the 

 first led to regard a flower as a bud modified as to its mode of deve- 

 lopment, in order to its application to a special purpose ; but abnor- 

 mal examples, in which all the floral circles are converted one into 

 another and to leaves, aff'ord the readiest and most convincing proofs 

 of the principle, and illustrate it most pleasingly. 



I have had an anomaly in which the leaves were half transformed 

 into . the several floral organs irregularly intermixed, carpels being 

 formed near the exterior. I have had cases of the whole of the 

 floral circles being converted into leaves while retaining their position 

 in crowded circles ; I have had petals changed into stamens, as well 

 as stamens into petals, and exhibiting all intermediate states ; I have 

 had stamens with imperfect anthers at their sides, terminating in a 

 true stigma, and enlarged below for the production of germs, carpels 

 changed into green leaves, and into petaloid processes ; I have had 

 abnormal approaches of ordinary leaves to the figure of a carpel, and 

 the production of germs ; and finally, instances of growing buds in 

 the axes of the petals, and various degrees of elongation of the axis 

 between the circles, and of its passing on to produce leaves and buds 

 beyond the flower. Such a series of examples establishes beyond 

 question the whole theory of the floral organs. 



I have referred without hesitation to the principle as being well 

 established, that organs, distinct in their origin and perhaps in their 

 functions, when brought near each other, either by their margins or 

 their surfaces, vdll unite so as to assume the appearance of a single 

 organ. This explains the nature of such flowers as convolvulus, cam- 

 panula, and innumerable others, as well as of such fruits as the apple, 

 orange, &c., hence the old terms monophyllous calyx, monopetaloiis 

 corolla, are discarded by all accurate botanists, as conveying a wrong 

 idea. De Candolle has proposed gamosepalous and gamopetalous, as 

 terms to take the place of these. I prefer, as simpler and more 

 directly conveying the idea, synsepalous, synpetalous, syncarpellous. 

 But, however well established the theory of coherence of parts maybe, 



