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establish it in detail.* We therefore run some risk of misinter- 
preting his views, but we would suggest that if it be asserted 
that the progenitors of our existing flowers were hermaphrodite, 
and that they have since become unisexual, then the numerical 
proportion of fossil plants with hermaphrodite flowers ought 
to be very much larger than it is. Again, we ought to And in 
the older strata, as compared with more recent deposits, a much 
larger proportion of hermaphrodite than of one-sexed flowers, 
whereas the exact reverse holds good. We are quite aware that 
too much stress must not be laid on any conclusion derived 
from what remain to us of fossil plants. 
There is now-a-days, and probably always was, a much larger 
proportion of woody plants with one-sexed flowers, and the 
latter would stand a better chance of being preserved than 
would the softer-tissued more ephemeral-lived plants. Lecoq 
estimates the proportion of unisexual species in central France 
among woody plants or perennials at one in eight, while in 
annuals the proportion is one in thirty-five. With hermaphrodite 
flowers, again, the frequent aggregation of one-sexed flowers 
into dense masses or catkins would necessarily impart a degree 
of permanence to them not possessed by plants producing their 
flowers in smaller numbers, or in less compact masses. Still, 
even if the necessary allowances be made, we do not think Dr. 
Spruce’s views receive support from geology. To us it appears 
that the bulk of evidence goes to show that annual plants, or 
those which flower once only in the course of their lives, are of 
more recent origin than woody plants which flower repeatedly, 
while the proportion of one-sexed flowers among annuals is 
much less than in the case of longer-lived plants. 
There is another point of view from which this question may 
be approached, and that may perhaps be more consonant with 
Dr. Spruce’s real view than that which we have attributed to 
him, and that is the primordial oneness of sex. We are so 
much in the habit of dwelling on the differences of sex, that we 
are apt to overlook the fact that those differences do not exist 
in the first instance, and that even in the adult state they are 
characteristic of the individual, not of the species. In the life 
of all creatures there is a period when there is no perceptible 
difierence of sex, and it seems to depend on circumstances which 
sex shall ultimately be developed. Now, if there were any 
intrinsic difference such as by our everyday language we imply 
that there is, it would surely be manifest from the beginning, 
and not be a subsequent evolution. 
* Dr. Spruce’s papers on this subject may be found in the Gardener’s 
Chronicle,” 1870, ^p. 826, and in the Journal of the Linnean Society,” 
1871, vol ix. p. ok 
