296 THE LIFE OF THE PLANT 



metamorphosis, or else has entirely disappeared, be- 

 come atrophied, and other organs developed instead. 

 The fact of such compensation, or correlation, in the 

 development of parts was observed by Goethe, to 

 whom, as we know, science owes its theory of meta- 

 morphosis. If one stamen, namely the upper one, 

 disappears in Labiate flowers (the very same stamen 

 which in the viper's bugloss is already much smaller 

 than others, fig. 80, 2 m) , what arises in its place ? We 

 notice that the disappearance of this stamen coincides 

 with the strong development of the upper lip, and 

 hence we may suppose that the stamen has trans- 

 formed itself into the petaloid organ, which joins 

 the two upper petals and forms the upper lip. This 

 need not puzzle us, because the transformation of the 

 stamen into a petal and the fusion of parts in a flower 

 is a very common phenomenon. This can also be 

 proved by the fact that in mint, where the bilabiate 

 corolla is very feebly developed, a fifth stamen is not 

 seldom preserved. An example taken from among 

 other plants will make this inference still more con- 

 clusive. Two other families, the so-called Solanaceae 

 (e.g. potato) and the Scrophulariaceae {e.g. red-rattle, 

 foxglove, etc.,) are correlated in exactly the same way 

 as the Boragineae and Labiatae. The Solanaceae have 

 a regular flower and five stamens ; the Scrophulariaceae 

 have a two-lipped flower and four stamens. How- 

 ever here, and especially in the figwort, we become 

 quite convinced that the uppermost fifth stamen has 

 been transformed into a petal, and has fused with the 

 two upper petals (fig. 80, 3 m) . 



We can, therefore, explain how the regular flower of 

 the forget-me-not with five stamens could gradually 

 have become transformed into a two-lipped flower with 

 only four stamens, characteristic of the majority of the 

 Labiatae. The sage has only two stamens. Let us 

 follow the fate of the other two. By examining the 



