60 



INHERITANCE. 



Chap. XIII 



is produced by the redevelopment of a rudiment always present and 

 which probably reveals to us the state of the flower, as far as the stamem 

 are concerned, at some ancient epoch. It is also difficult to believe tH 

 the other four stamens and the petals, after an arrest of development at , 

 very early embryonic age, would have come to full perfection in colour 

 structure, and function, unless these organs had at some former period 

 normally passed through a similar course of growth. Hence it appears to 

 me probable that the progenitor of the genus Antirrhinum must at some 

 remote epoch have included five stamens and borne flowers in some degree 

 resembling those now produced by the peloric form. 



Lastly, I may add that many instances have been recorded of flowers 

 not generally ranked as peloric, in which certain organs, normally few in 

 number, have been abnormally augmented. As such an increase of parts 

 cannot be looked at as an arrest of development, nor as due to the rede- 

 velopment of rudiments, for no rudiments are present, and as these addi- 

 tional parts bring the plant into closer relationship with its natural allies, 

 they ought probably to be viewed as reversions to a primordial condition. ' 



These several facts show us in an 



g manner how 



intimately certain abnormal states are connected together 

 namely, arrests of development causing parts to become rudi- 

 mentary or to be wholly suppressed,— the redevelopment of 

 parts at present in a more or less rudimentary condition,— the 

 reappearance of organs of which not a vestige can now be de- 

 tected,— and to these may be added, in the case of animals, the 

 presence during youth, and subsequent disappearance, of cer- 

 tain characters which occasionally are retained throughout life. 

 Some naturalists look at all such abnormal structures as a return 

 to the ideal state of the group to which the affected being 

 belongs ; but it is difficult to conceive what is meant to be con- 



yed 



this 



expr 



Other naturalists maintain, 



ith 



greater probability and distinctness of view, that the 



bond of 



between the several foregoing 



actual, though partial, return to the structure of the 



pro 



of the group. If this view be correct, we must 



believe that a vast number of characters, capable of 

 lie hidden in every organic being. But it v 



ould be 



mi 



stake 



all bein 



to suppose that the number is equally great in 

 We know, for instance, that plants of many orders occasionall 

 become peloric; but many more cases have been observe 

 in the Labiatae and Scrophulariaceae than in any other order 

 and in one genus of the Scrophulariacea3, namely Linaria, no \& 



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