364 MR. M. T. MASTERS ON PROLIFICATION IN FLOWERS. 



loEjical difficulties in the way of accepting such an opinion, an examination of any number 

 of cases is always sufficient to refute it ; for, as Moquin well remarks, the carpels may 

 frequently be found either in an unaltered condition or more or less modified. 



In the more perfect specimens of prolification, such as those raised by art, the carpels 

 are very frequently absent, as in those figured by Dr. Hill in the work before quoted. I 

 may here remark that the cu.ltivation of these prolified flowers was at one time much 

 more attended to than it is at present. In one of the old stained-glass windows (Dutch) 

 of the Bodleian Picture Gallery at Oxford is a representation of a proliferous Ranunculus. 



If the pistil be normally syncarpous, its constituent carpels, if present in the prolified 

 flower, become disjoined one from the other to allow of the passage from between them of 

 the prolonged axis : thus was it in the specimens of Digitalis before referred to, as well as 

 in some monstrous specimens of the wild Carrot, laid before the Society by the writer of 

 this paper in March 1859. Not only are the carpels thus frequently separated one from 

 the other by the prolonged axis, but they undergo commonly a still further change in 

 becoming more or less completely foliaceous, as in theDaucus just mentioned, where the car- 

 pels were prolonged into two lance-shaped leaves, whose margins in some cases were slightly 

 incurved at the apex, forcibly calling to mind the long "beaks " that some Umbelliferous 

 genera have terminating their fruits — for instance, Scandix. Dr. Norman, in the fourth 

 series of the ' Annales des Sciences,' vol. ix., has described a prolification of the flower 

 of Anchusa ochrolettca, in which the pistil consisted of two leaves, situated antero- 

 posteriorly on a long internode, with a small terminal flower-bud between them ; and 

 numerous similar instances might be cited. In this place may be noticed those instances 

 wherein the placenta elongates so much that the pericarp becomes ruptured to allow of 

 the protrusion of the placenta, although this prolongation is not attended by the forma- 

 tion of new buds. Oases of this kind occurring in llelastoma and Solammi have been 

 put on record by M. Alph. de OandoUe *. This is a change analogous with that which 

 occiu's in some species of Leontice or Caidopliylliim, as commented on by Robert Brown, 



If the pistil be apocarpous and the carpels arranged spirally on an elevated thalamus, it 

 then frequently happens that the carpels, especially the upper ones, become carried up 

 with the prolonged axis, more widely separated one from the other than below, and par- 

 ticularly liable to undergo various petalloid or foliaceous changes as in proliferous Hoses, 

 Fotentilla, &c. ; but if the carpels be few in number and placed in a verticillate manner, 

 the axis then generally passes upwards without any change in the form or position of the 

 carpels being apparent, as in the proliferous Columbine, a sketch of which accompanies this 

 paper (sketch 5). 



The monocarpellary flowers that have come under my notice in a prolified condition 

 are very few. Some Leguminosce, an Amygdalus, and a Thesium complete the Kst. In 

 the two former, there is good reason to think that the solitary carpel is only terminal 

 from the alDortion of a second carpel, and therefore, as well as for other reasons that will 

 hereafter be given, prolification in these flowers belongs rather to the axillary than to 

 the median form. The Thesium has been before referred to in the course of this .f)aper ; 

 the pistil is here normally monocarpellary and adherent to the calyx ; in the abnormal 

 * Neue Denkschriften der allgemeine Schweizerischen Gesellschaft. Band 5, 1841, plate 2. 



