110 ■ PMNOIPLBS OP PLANT-TBEATOLOGT. 



immediately below one of tlie five sepals, and with 

 fairly deep furrows between them. He also points out 

 that occasionally in the rose the fleshy inferior "fruit" 

 completely disappears, and the sepals are then united 

 by their somewhat swollen or fleshy bases, the pistils 

 being superior. Masters figures a remarkable case in 

 the apple in which the sepals are situated at the base 

 of the carpels (PL XXXIX, fig. 3). Planchon comes, 

 like Masters, Penzig, and others, to the conclusion that 

 of these Rosaceous " fruits " both axis and calyx are 

 component parts. The Schleiden theory, that they 

 are composed purely and simply of the swollen cupular 

 axis, is almost certainly erroneous. 



Dialysis of the receptacle observed by Domin in 

 Potentilla aurea has been referred to on a previous 

 page. 



Stenzel figures flowers of the snowdrop {Galanthus 

 nivalis) with one or two sepals situated at the base of 

 the ovary, and Celakovsky describes and figures a 

 flower of the same plant with a double sepal one half 

 of which was green-striped and decurrent down the 

 ovary to its base. 



Magnus mentions the insertion of a sepal at the base 

 of the ovary in the orchid Dendrobiiim Wallichii. 



A most interesting Fuchsia-Sower came under notice, 

 in which three of the sepals were partly foliaceous 

 with the lamina on one side, decurrent part way down 

 the petiole, which in its turn could be distinctly traced 

 down the side of the ovary to the base of the latter. 

 This may be taken as a partial reversion of the calyx 

 to its ancestral position, and the fact just cited proves 

 definitely that in the normal flower the bases or stalks 

 of the sepals are adnate to the "inferior" ovary, 

 which is not, therefore, really inferior at all, nor of 

 axial nature, as is usually supposed. In fact, the 

 " inferior " ovary is, wherever it may appear to occur, 

 a figment of the academical botanist's imagination (PI. 

 XXXIX, figs. 4-6). 



Velenovsky describes abnormal flowers of the willow- 



