538 
MORPHOLOGY. 
BOOK VI. 
Other ; further, it will be perceived that the two sides of 
the ovary are traversed by veins emanating from the suture 
that terminates in the style, and that these veins take a 
slightly ascending direction towards the suture that bears 
the ovules. Now, if when the pod of the pea is half grown, 
it be laid open through the suture that bears the ovules, 
all these circumstances will, at that time, be distinctly visible ; 
and if it then be compared with one of the leaflets of the 
plant, it will be apparent that the suture bearing ovules an- 
swers to the two edges of the leaf, the suture without ovules 
to the midrib, and the style to the mucro. Hence it might, 
almost without further evidence, be suspected that the ovary 
was an alteration of the leaf; but if the inquiry be carried 
further in other plants, this suspicion becomes converted into 
certainty. In the first place, the suture without ovules, which 
has been said to be the midrib, is always external with respect 
to the axis of fructification, as would be the case with the 
midrib of a leaf folded up and terminating the fructification. 
In the next place, nothing is more common than to find the 
pistil converted either into petals or into leaves : its change 
into petals is to be found in numerous double flowers ; as, for 
example, double Narcissi, Hibiscus Rosa sinensis, wall-flowei's, 
ranunculuses, saxifrages, and others. These, however, only 
show its tendency to revert to petals as the representatives of 
leaves. The cases of its reverting to other organs are much 
more instructive. In the double Ulex Europaeus the ovary 
is extremely like one of the segments of the calyx ; its ovu- 
liferous suture is not closed ; in the room of ovules it some- 
times bears little yellow processes, like miniature petals, and 
its back corresponds to what would be the back of the calyx ; 
no style or stigma is visible ; sometimes two of these metamor- 
phosed ovaries are present : in that case the sutures which 
should bear ovules are opposite to each other, just as the 
inflexed margins of two opposite leaves would be. In Kerria 
Japonica, which is only known in our gardens in a double state, 
the ovaries are uniformly little miniature leaves, with serrated 
margins corresponding to the ovuliferous suture of the ovary, 
and an elongated point representing the style ; their interior 
is occupied by other smaller leaves. Nothing is more common 
