232 THE FLOWER. 



nseus,* about the middle of the last centuiy. It was newly taught 

 by Caspar Frederic Wolff, about twenty years later, and again, after 

 the lapse of nearly twenty years more, by the celebrated Goethe, 

 who was entirely ignorant, as were his scientific contemporaries, of 

 what Linna3us and Wolff had written on the subject. Goethe's 

 curious and really scientific treatise was as completely forgotten or 

 overlooked as the significant hints of Linnajus had been. In ad- 

 vance of the science of the day, and more or less encumbered with 

 hypothetical speculations, none of these writings appear to have ex- 

 erted any appreciable influence over the progress of the science, 

 until it had reached a point, early in the present century, when the 

 nearly simultaneous generalizations of several botanists, following 

 different clews, were leading to the same conclusions. Ignorant of 

 the writings of Goethe and Wolff, De CandoUe was the first to de- 

 velop, from an independent and original point of view, the idea of 

 symmetry in the flower ; that the plan, or tj'pe, of the blossom is 

 regular and symmetrical, but that this symmetry is more or less in- 

 terfered with, modified, or disguised by secondary influences, such as 

 suppressions, alterations, or irregularities, giving rise to the greatest 

 diversity of forms. The reason of the prevailing symmetrical ar- 

 rangement of parts in the blossom has only recently been made 

 apparent, in the investigation of phyllotaxis (236) ; from which it 

 appears that the general arrangement of the leaves ujjon the stem 

 is carried out in the flower. 



Sect. III. The Symjietry op the Flower. 



43G. A Symmetrical Flower is one which has an equal number of 

 parts in each circle or whorl of organs ; as, for example, in Fig. 

 334, where there are five sepals, five petals, five stamens, and five 

 pistils. It is not less symmetrical, although less simple, when there 

 are two or more circles of the same kind of organ ; as in Sedum 

 (Fig. 3G1), where there are two. sets of stamens, five in each; in 

 the Barberry, where there are two or more sets of sepals, two of 

 petals, and two of stamens, three in each set, &c. A complete floioer 



* " Principium /?o?v(?/i etfoliorum idem est. Principium gemmarum et folio- 

 rum idem est. Gemma constat foliorum rndimcntis. Perianthium sit ex cou- 

 jiatis foliorum rudiraentis," etc. Phllosophia Botanica^ p. 301. 



