14 



PRINCIPLES OF PLANT-TERATOLOGY. 



apples, each bearing at its tip a sepal. Each obviously 

 represented merely the swollen fleshy base of the extra 

 sepal, and is comparable to the fleshy portions of the 

 disjoined pears above-mentioned. They resembled in 

 colour and consistence the mother-apple itself. They 

 could not possibly be of axial nature, seeing that each 

 was prolonged above into a sepal. If they represent, 

 as they clearly do, the sepal-bases, this must also be the 

 interpretation of the pome itself. Doubtless the sepals 

 in this case are transformed petals ; and their presence 

 is probably correlated with the seedless character of 

 the fruit. 



The view above set forth as to the morphology of the 

 pome is supported by H. Hoffmann's observation in 

 certain flowers of the pear where a second calyx was 

 formed immediately within the first, followed by petals 

 and stamens ; this may be regarded as a second sessile 

 flower. 



The following explanation may, therefore, be applied 

 to all abnormal pears of the storeyed type hitherto 

 described by botanists. The axis of the flower has 

 proliferated, thereby (as in all such cases) causing the 

 " inferior ovary" to disappear ; a second sessile flower is 

 immediately formed within the calyx or the corolla of 

 the first, the stamens and petals of the latter, perhaps 

 owing to lack of adequate material, not being formed 

 at all ; in the second or subsequent flowers so formed 

 by proliferation the calyx is constituted as in the first 

 flower, but an ovary may or may not be present ; it 

 frequently happens, however, as a natural result, doubt- 

 less, of the abnormally-elongating axis of the extra 

 flowers, that the fleshy sepal-bases become more or less 

 dissociated and individualized and the entire sepals 

 themselves displaced out of the whorled into a scattered 

 spiral arrangement on the central axis. We occasionally 

 see this displacement, or irregular grouping, in a normal 

 pear where a foliar organ (best regarded as a sepal) 

 occurs on the side of the fruit instead of in the " eye " 

 at the apex; this fact cannot therefore, on this vie*w, 



