RISING PHYLLOTAXIS. 139 



primitive floral types ; the fact that the majority of these again are 

 whorled, while in a great many the vegetative shoots remain in the 

 spiral condition, apparently presenting no difficulty. Simul- 

 taneously with the introduction of these ideas, Gymnosperms were 

 becoming finally separated from Dicotyledons, and the further 

 fallacy was interpolated, that since Angiosperms must have passed 

 through a G-ymnospermic condition, that condition must necessarily 

 be the same as that observed in recent Gymnosperms which 

 happen to be all diclinous anemophilous tree- types; and thus in 

 spite of the teaching of the heterosporous Vascular Cryptogams, 

 dicliny as a primitive condition became added to dimery. The 

 general lines of the DecandoUean classification, followed in this 

 country by BentKam and Hooker, were consequently more or less 

 inverted ; and it is so far possible that the systematic work of the 

 Eichler-Engler school rests on a very fallacious basis. It is to be 

 hoped that at no very distant date the pendulum will again swing 

 back to the DecandoUean standpoint, since it is increasingly 

 evident that no hypothesis as to the phylogeny of Angiosperm 

 families can ever be acceptable to morphologists which is not based 

 on the standpoint that floral axes and members primarily obey the 

 same mechanical -laws of construction as obtain in asymmetrical 

 vegetative shoots, and therefore originally followed the same 

 simple Fibonacci ratio systems : that all primitive floral types 

 were therefore necessarily asymmetrical in construction, and 

 produced a considerable number of members in an indefinite 

 system ; the often abused term " indefinite " being used in the sense 

 pointed out by Sohleiden as its only logical meaning, i.e., a con- 

 struction in which lateral members are set apart for their special 

 functions in an indefinite number along the same genetic spiral. 



The fact that the present position of Systematic Botany may be 

 wholly erroneous, and that its errors may be traced back, in part 

 at least, to the neglect of the correct presentation of spiral con- 

 struction, may prove to be historically interesting. 



Without going into further detail at present as to the con- 

 struction of floral-shoots, it may be pointed out that evidence will 

 be subsequently adduced to show that the vast majority of floral- 

 structures may be reduced to derivatives of two common asym- 



