METAMORPHOSIS. 



151 



admixture of ancestral and progressive characters. . 

 But this is merely what we find in so many other 

 abnormalities. 



Vuillemin has recently enunciated, in an ingenious 

 paper, the view that peloric flowers are in all cases 

 due to " gamo-gemmie," i. e. the " intimate association 

 of two or several floral rudiments." He ascribes the 

 phenomenon to synanthy which has become so inti- 

 mate and complete that the final result is, to all 

 appearance, a single flower. He classes all peloric 

 flowers side by side with the case of the large" terminal 



Fia. 122.— 



oma. Zygomorphic corolla in male flowers. 

 (After Hildebrand.) 



" peloric " flower of Digitalis.* His attention was 

 concentrated mainly on the genus Linaria. 



It is, however, difficult to see any evidence for the 

 existence of fusion of two or more flowers as a mode 

 of formation of the majority of peloric flowers. 



Zygovwrphj. — Vidal and also Hildebrand observed 

 irregular flowers in Fuchsia in which, in one case, the 

 anterior petals were enlarged, in the other the upper 

 median petal was very large as compared with the 

 three remaining ones ; the petals in each flower formed 

 with the upper sepals a kind of helmet. 



Hildebrand also observed in a Begonia that the 



* For the treatment of this case in the present work, see under " Fascia- 



