ORIGIN OF ORGANIC FORMS 297 



tube of the corolla of this plant, splitting it longi- 

 tudinally, we find, a little above the two developed 

 stamens — exactly at the spots occupied by smaller 

 stamens in other Labiatae — two scarcely visible atro- 

 phied stamens (fig. 69, fig. 80, 5 n, n). According to 

 Goethe's theory, mentioned earlier, the remaining two 

 stamens have attained their greater size at the expense 

 of the undeveloped ones, and have thus acquired the 

 peculiar structure already familiar to us (fig. 69) . This 

 peculiarity in the form of the two stamens presents in 

 its turn different degrees of complication in different 

 species of sage, which proves that it did not arise 

 suddenly but by a series of gradual changes. The 

 description of these transitional forms would, however, 

 require too much time as well as too many diagrams ^ 

 to be dwelt upon here. We might have made clear 

 by exactly similar arguments how another still more 

 curious flower — the orchid — could have arisen from 

 a regular flower such as the lily. Morphology or 

 the ' Comparative Anatomy ' of plants is full of such 

 examples ; we may say it entirely consists of them. 



Thus, if the theory of metamorphosis explains how, 

 by means of a range of insensible transitions, different 

 organs of one and the same plant have been derived 

 from each other, the anatomical study of similar organs 

 in different plants brings us to the similar conclusion, 

 that one vegetable form could have been derived from 



' We came to the conclusion in discussing the flower, that the whole 

 function of this complicated staminal apparatus consists in the promotion 

 of cross-fertilisation by means of insects. This cross-fertilisation would 

 evidently be more perfectly achieved were the flowers differentiated in 

 sex, i.e. if some flowers contained pistils and others stamens. In this case 

 this complicated and gradually developed staminal apparatus would 

 become useless, and in fact in other species of sage, e.g. in the field sage, 

 in addition to the hermaphrodite flowers female flowers are also found ; in 

 these we are able to observe the way this curious and now useless 

 apparatus gradually became atrophied; how it has repassed in reverse 

 order through almost all the phases, which it must have passed through, 

 during its evolution. 



