114 I. H. Burkill — Flower of Ranunculus arvensis. [No. % 



It is impossible to dissociate the lack of nutrition felt, it must be 

 believed, by the flowers of the worn out plants and the right of primo- 

 geniture spoken of. The power to satisfy the sepaline mood and the 

 petaline mood and to form abundant stamens and carpels is in the 

 nutrition of the flower. 



On page 110, it was said that the moods jostle for their compliment 

 of organs and that the older win by being already established when the 

 younger begin to compete. There is a reservation to make in regard to 

 this statement, to demonstrate which table XV has been recast in table 

 XXVI. The latter table shows that in well and fairly well fed flowers — 

 say with 20 organs and more — the proportion falling to the carpellary 

 mood is nearly constant, and that, as already made more or less evident, 

 the staminal mood is residuary legatee for the extra vigour. Therefore 

 for the richer flowers the vigour may be said to be roughly apportioned 

 between on the one hand the sepaline, petaline and staminal moods 

 which three jostle each other, and on the other hand the carpellary 

 mood. In flowers poorer in organs than 20, the carpellary mood seems 

 less prepared for and is subject in like degree to the staminal mood 

 to the jostling for space. 



Thus do the richer flowers appear more pre-apportioned than the 

 poorer ones and therefore more knit together into an unit in the 

 direction in which the flowers of most Phanerogams are knit together. 

 We may easily believe that, given a flower with its moods so knit to- 

 gether that they vary together, the force of pressure of organ on organ 

 in the bud may finish the shaping of the whole. 



We can see that the flowers of the Kew race are a little more 

 knitted into an uuit than those of the German races. Thus the petals 

 and sepals are much more often equal in number, and (as is shown 

 on p. 103) when we get a flower of the Kew race departing in the 

 sepals from normal by losing one, then the other organs are more likely 

 to lose in proportion than in the German races. In short there is 

 more see-sawing of mood on mood in the German races than in the 

 Kew race. 



However there are irregularities in the curves with which I have 

 been dealing which cannot clearly be attributed to the struggling of the 

 moods for satiety and their relative advantages from primogeniture. 

 These are made obvious in the recast table XV which we now have In 

 XXVI. 



The chief irregularities of the Kew race are :— 



(i) — Between 15 and 20 the stamens are above what would 

 seem reasonable, rather more so at 15, 16, 18 and J 9 than' 

 at 17 and 20. 



