An Historical Sketch . 
65 
Finally, with reference to ‘ sports ’ generally, I may quote a sentence 
from his ‘ Lehrbuch der Botanik,’ p. 132, where he says: ‘ Sports (Miss- 
bildungen) can only in rare cases be made use of in drawing morphological 
conclusions.’ 
Goebel (56) is a staunch upholder of the sui generis theory of the 
ovule and a severe critic of the method of settling morphological problems 
by the aid of ‘ sports.’ In his ‘ Organographie ’ he recapitulates his views 
on the subject, put forward much earlier in Schenk’s ‘ Handbuch der 
Botanik’ and elsewhere. Speaking of the replacement of sporangia by 
vegetative organs, as in cases where stamens become foliaceous or petaloid, 
he says that ‘ a metamorphosis of the former into the latter does not 
occur, and the transitional stages between the normal and abnormal con- 
dition do not establish such a metamorphosis, but only show that there 
may be a varying degree of disturbance of the normal state of affairs.’ 
The morphological character of stamens is determined by means of the 
development and a comparison with vascular Cryptogams. In treating of 
proliferated ovules, he considers it unjustifiable to regard these as reversions, 
and absurd to represent the simple leaf into which the ovule has become 
metamorphosed as the most primitive phylogenetic stage of development. 
‘ The only conclusion it would be possible to draw from the proliferations 
would be that the integuments are formed from carpellary substance or 
represent outgrowths of the carpel which are the better adapted to vegeta- 
tive development in proportion as the reproductive organs (the nucellus) are 
hindered in their growth.’ We are to regard these proliferated ovules as 
crippled structures which have suffered a pathological modification of form ; 
they may not be used for the determination of homologies. ‘ We are 
surprised to hear the assertion made that a leaflet bearing the abortive 
nucellus is homologous with the sorus- or sporangium-bearing leaflet of 
a fern. As if an abortive rudiment, showing no sign even of an embryo-sac, 
could in the remotest degree have anything to do with a sporangium.’ 
He urges that ‘it is a more profitable task to consider how such 
abnormalities have arisen and to discover the causes which condition the 
deviation from the normal development,’ and this is the burden of his 
article on ‘ The Teratology of Plants’ which appeared a few years ago in 
‘ Science Progress.’ 
Here too we may place Eichler (49), who during his career held in 
turn all three views on the subject, but at length appears to have found 
repose for his ideas among those who support the theory we are now 
considering. In 1875, in the first volume of his ‘ BlUthendiagramme,’ he 
upholds the axial-theory of the ovule, influenced largely by the facts 
resulting from Schmitz’s recent work on the Piperaceae, and by those 
cases where the ovule is apparently replaced by a shoot ; further, from the 
teachings of the theory of descent he felt bound to regard the ovule 
F 
