1120 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



est reste entier, on ne pourra conserver le moindre doute sur le pheno- 

 mene de division qui a valu a cette germination son apparente polycotyle- 

 donie.' ' Nothing, apparently, could be clearer than this explanation, 

 but unfortunately it does not meet the facts as they presented themselves 

 at Kew. In pi. xxiv., fig. 2, I have figured a seedling with three 

 perfectly distinct and normal cotyledons and three equally normal young 

 leaves developed from the plumule. ... PL xxv., fig. 4, shows the 

 result at the end of the second year. It will be seen that I obtained a 

 young Sycamore with ternary instead of opposite leaves, and I was in 

 hopes that I had secured a new seminal variation which would be 

 constant. These hopes were, however, frustrated." In pi. xxiv., 

 fig. 1, the author illustrates a case similar to those which Duchartre 

 studied and also another, which apparently he did not meet with, having 

 three cotyledons followed by a pair of opposite leaves, one of which is 

 bipartite. " In the former case, according to Duchartre's view, the 

 embryo started with a pair of cotyledons, one of which subsequently 

 branched." Having referred to Masters (Vegetable Teratology, p. 370), 

 who thinks with Duchartre that " some of these cases may be accounted 

 for by chorisis or by a cleavage of the original cotyledons," the author 

 writes : — 



" I arrive, however, at the conclusion that the simplest explanation is 

 that in all the cases now described the embryo is provided with three 

 instead of two primordial lateral outgrowths, and that these either 

 develop completely into three normal cotyledons, or that two of them 

 sooner or later coalesce into one which is more or less deeply bifid. If 

 this explanation is true of cotyledons, it must equally apply to the 

 similar phenomena exhibited by the epicotylar leaves. ... I confess 

 that all the evidence seems to me to point to the fact that cotyledons, 

 whether suctorial store organs or foliaceous, must still be regarded as 

 foliar organs. Lord Avebury {Seedlings, vol. i., pp. 9, 10) cites the opinion 

 of Klebs who observes, that ' on the whole the forms of cotyledons are much 

 simpler than those of leaves, and. . . . that while in some cases perhaps, 

 like the first leaves, they retain the form which characterised the species 

 in bygone ages, we may rather, as a more generally applicable explanation, 

 apply to them the suggestion of Goebel with reference to stipules, and 

 regard them as simplified by arrest.' Lord Avebury adds that another 

 suggestion has been that cotyledons are 'a survival of the universal 

 foliage of deciduous trees in olden geological days, ere time had differen- 

 tiated them into their present varied forms.' That cotyledons preserve 

 a more ancient and primitive type of foliage is in accordance with the 

 general facts of embryology. The cotyledons have their own battle to 

 fight, but it is not that of the adult plant, and adaptations suitable for 

 the more strenuous struggle would be superfluous in the simpler conflict. 

 This consideration is strengthened by the case produced in fig. 30, of a 

 young seedling of Libocedrus macrolcpis. In this, after a time, there is a 

 complete change in the form and disposition of the foliar organs. The 

 primitive leaves, which are not very different from the cotyledons with 

 which they are serially continuous, no doubt represent a generalised and 

 unmodified type of foliage." — 11. I. L. 



