THE COMPOUND PISTIL. 295 



558. "When the styles are separate towards the summit, but 

 united below, they are usually described as a single organ ; which 

 is said to be parted, cleft, lobed, &c., according to the extent of cohe- 

 sion. This language was adopted, as in the case of leaves (281) 

 and floral envelopes (462), long before the real structure was under- 



csis of Schleiclen, Endlichcr, and others. According to this new view, since buds 

 regularly arise from the axils of leaves and from tire extremity of the stem or 

 axis, and only in some exceptional and abnormal cases from the margins or 

 sm-face of leaves, so ovules, which are viewed as a form of buds, are considered 

 to arise from the receptacle, cither from the axis of the flower, like terminal 

 buds, or from the axils of the carpellary leaves, like axillary buds. Thus, 

 placentae are supposed to belong to the stem; and not to the carpellary leaves ; 

 and a one-celled ovary, with one or more ovules arising from the base of the 

 cell, would nearly i-e23resent the typical state of the gyntecium. This theory, 

 which the intelligent student may easily apply in detail, offers a ready explana- 

 tion of free central placentation, especially in such cases as Primula, &c., where 

 not a trace of dissepiments is ever discoverable. But in Caryophyllaccaj the 

 dissepiments are often manifest. In applying it to ordinary central placenta- 

 tion, we have to suppose the cohesion of the inflexed margins of the carpellary 

 leaves with a central prolongation of the axis or receptacle which beare the 

 placenta;. But in parietal placentation, the advocates of this theory are driven 

 to the violent supposition that the axis divides within the compound ovary into 

 twice as many branches as the caqjels in its composition, and that tliese branches 

 regularly adhere, in pairs, one to each margin of all the carpellary leaves. Its 

 application is attended with still greater difficulties in the case of simple and 

 uncombined pistils, where the ovules occupy the whole inner suture, which must 

 be taken as the typical state of the gyuascium ; but to which the new hypothesis 

 can be adapted onlj' by supposing that an ovuliferous branch of the axis enters 

 each carpel, and separates into two parts, one cohering with each margin of the 

 metamorphosed leaf. This view, however, not only appears absurd, but may 

 be disproved by direct observation, as it has been most completely by those 

 monstrosities in which an anther is changed into a pistil, or even one part of 

 the anther is thus transformed and bears ovules, while the other, as well &s the 

 filament, remains unchiinged ; — a case where the ovules are far removed from 

 anything which can possibly belong to the axis. We may further remark, that 

 even the appearance of a placenta or ovuliferous body in the ajiparcnt axil of a 

 carpcllaiy leaf no more proves that the body in question belongs to the axis, 

 than that the appendage before the petals of Parnassia and the American Lin- 

 den represents a branch instead of a leaf. As to the terminal naked ovule of 

 the Yew, where the structure, on any view, is reduced to the greatest possible 

 simplicity, it is surely as probable that it answers to the earliest formed, or 

 foliar, portion of the ultimate phyton, here alone developed, as to the cauline part, 

 which so seldom appears in the flower. The most important of these points 

 are elucidated by Mr. Brown, in Plantm Jamnicce Rariores, pp. 107-112, in 

 two notes, which apparently are not sufficiently studied by botanists. 



