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XIX. On JProlification in Flowers, and especially on that Form termed Median Prolijication. 

 By Maxwell T. Masters, Esq., F.L.S., Lecturer on Botany at St. George's Hospital. 



Read January 17th, 1861. 



1 HE following paper contains some general remarks on the nature and varieties of that 

 kind of malformation of the flower which Linnseus and other botanists have termed Pro- 

 lification, the plants peculiarly liable to it, their conformation and the inferences to be 

 derived from them as to the nature of the deviation in question, the coincident changes 

 in the various floral whorls, and other points of interest connected with the subject. The 

 facts upon which the ensuing remarks are based have been derived from the standard 

 treatises of Moquin-Tandon and Engelmann on Vegetable Teratology, and from a large 

 number of descriptive notices scattered through such of the Erench and English scientific ' 

 periodicals since 1841, the date of publication of the ' Elements de Teratologic ' of Moquin- 

 Tandon, as I have been enabled to consult. In addition I owe to the kindness of friends 

 many similar extracts from the German periodicals ; and lastly, I have had the oppor- 

 tunity of personally examining a large number of cases of this malformation which have 

 been supplied either by the kindness of my friends or by my own research. 



Unless some special reason should demand them, I shall not stay to give exact refer- 

 ences to the very numerous papers and memoirs I have had occasion to constilt ; many of 

 them are duly cited in the two standard works already mentioned, while others will be 

 referred to as circumstances may require. 



A special interest is attached to the subject in an historical point of view, inasmuch 

 as both Linngeus and Goethe availed themselves of it in the construction of their theories 

 of morphology *. 



Eor the most part I shall avail myself of the classification of M. Moquin-Tandon, who 

 speaks of prolification as median when an adventitious bud springs from the centre of the 

 flower as a direct continuation of its growing point, as axillary when it springs from the 

 axil of one of the parts of the flower, as lateral when the addition is rather to the inflo- 

 rescence than to the flower itself. He speaks also of prolification of the fruit as well as 

 of the flower ; but I think no advantage arises from separating this kind of prolification 

 from that wliich occurs in the centre of the flower, for reasons that will hereafter be given. 

 Eurthermore the adventitious growth may either be a flower-bud, a leaf-bud, or a com- 

 pound bud t. 



Engelmann applies the term diaphysis to central prolification, and echlastesis to the 

 axillary form : these terms have the advantage of priority ; but botanists seem to have 

 adopted the less pedantic nomenclature of the Erench author, and with good reason J, 



* Linn. ' Prolepsis Plant.' §§ vi. et vii. Goethe, ' Versuch liber die Metamorph.' cap. xv. & svi. §§ 103-106. 

 t Moquin-Tandon, ' Elementa de T&atologie,' 8vo. Paris, 1841, pp. 362-387. 

 I Engelmann, ' De Antholysi Prodromus,' 8vo. Frankfurt, 1832, §§ 52-61. 

 VOL. XXIII. 3 c 



