tg1g| STOUT—INTERSEXES 131 
The development of perfect flowers in hermaphrodites shows 
that male and female organs may originate side by side. That 
stamens and pistils exhibit differences in nutritive and metabolic 
activities is obvious, most marked of which perhaps is the tempo- 
rary nature of the stamens and the more permanent and vegeta- 
tive nature of the’ovary portion of the pistil. The life processes 
of the two develop along somewhat different lines, as the structure 
and physiology of the respective spores, gametophytes, and sex 
cells fully indicate. Such organic specificity is well known fre- 
quently to involve specific differences in chemical organization. 
This, however, is not indicative that the essential nature of fertili- 
zation processes is dependent on such differences. 
There seems to be no exception to the rule that in perfect 
flowers the male organs constitute an outer and lower whorl, 
the primary anlagen of which are laid down slightly ahead of 
those for the female. Such a general mode of development it 
would seem must have special significance in respect to sex dif- 
ferentiation. Such conditions, however, are adaptive both to 
-immediate and to more remote function of the parts involved. 
When conditions in monoecious forms are reviewed’ it is to be 
noted that when grouped in spikes and catkins the staminate 
flowers are as a rule about the pistillate, either when both are 
in a same catkin or when they are in different catkins. Here, 
however, direct adaptations for facilitating pollination are in 
evidence. 
The phenomena of intersexuality in plants and animals indi- 
cate clearly that neither hermaphroditism nor dioecism are fixed 
conditions for species or for individuals as such. Maleness and 
femaleness are subject to much lability; they are even reversible; 
the physical and chemical substances involved are subject to 
modification in ontogeny. The factors in sex determination for 
the individual as a whole or for individual sex organs are highly 
variable. Such conditions give support to a metabolic and epi- 
genetic theory of sex in so far as the nature of sex is revealed in 
the morphological differentiation of sex organs. 
New York BoranicaL GARDEN 
New York 
