Sr Se ean Oe ee 8) Ae a ie ee ee 
Ree eee ai eve ry 
CONSERVATION AND CORRELATION OF VITAL FORCE. 355 
same time lost the usual hairs.” * <‘ In certain excessive develop- 
ments of the parts of the vegetable the hairs abort incompletely, 
or entirely.” f} ‘Mr. Joseph de Caffarelli has given to me a some- 
what dwarfed branch of bitter-sweet, which is. covered with an 
enormous number of small hairs.” } “In Phleum Boehmeri the 
inferior palet of the flower is dilated sometimes beyond measure ; 
the edges then are soldered together at the base ; at the same time 
the superior palet, and the pedicel of the rudimentary flower, abort 
entirely.” § 
“I have observed a monstrosity of Fabda vulgaris, the stipules 
of which had taken on an enormous increase ; they were changed 
into oval, foliaceous limbs, half arrow-shaped and slightly sinuous ; 
at the same time the limbs of the ordinary leaves had disappeared 
entirely.” | 
“In a monstrosity of Muscari comosum, all the flowers had 
aborted ; at the same time the peduncles had become longer.” $ 
“ Lately there has „been communicated to the Société q’ Agri- 
culture de la Haute-Garonne a spike of corn which presented a 
curious example of this last balance; all the flowers were found 
in a normal condition except one, of which the calicinal envelopes 
had taken on a growth almost double their natural size; the sur- 
face of this flower was covered with a thick coat of hairs, and its 
appearance resembled much that of a flower of the “folle avoine.”** 
“In some flowers the atrophy of the stamens coincides with the 
hypertrophy of the pistils. For example, in certain individuals of 
Lychhnis dioica the male organs are found dilated, so that the pis- 
tils are represented by small, gland-like bodies; but in the other 
flowers the female organs are much developed, so that the stamens 
are reduced to simple rudiments; the same phenomenon occurs in 
Spiræa Aruncus, and in Sedum Rhodiola.” tt} In this last quotation 
we have plants associating themselves with such as our Houstonia - 
uea in which, (belonging to hermaphrodite genera) there is a 
manifest tendency to assume that highér sexual organization 
Where the individual shall be prepotently either male or female, 
as the one or the other set of organs takes on unusual growth. 
In other words, it seems to be a good illustration of the principle 
of vital compensation applied to function as well as to structure. 
: Mr. Thomas Meehan has furnished us a case directly in point 
*Tératologie Végétale. p. 63. + Idem, pp. 62 and 63. {Idem, p.68. § Idem, p. 157. 
li Idem, p. 156, T Idem, p. 156. ** Idem, p. 158. Tim; 
