Tubers in Nymphaea Lotus, var . monstrosa. 1 1 3 
the influences tending to develope a flower have been suffi- 
ciently strong or lasting to leave a trace of their action behind 
them. 
In Nymphaea the case is different. The peduncles and the 
sepals, as well as the swollen end of the shoot forming the 
receptacle, remain to bear witness to the struggle between the 
two kinds of branches. After the formation of a flower has 
apparently commenced, a complete change has occurred in the 
course of development ; and, at the moment when the first 
petals should arise, a new influence supervenes ; in place of 
petals, stamens, and carpels, normal foliage-leaves appear. 
This distinction is not to be lightly passed over ; for the two 
conditions are usually regarded among teratologists as due to 
exactly opposite causes. Chloranthy ‘ differs from Heterotaxy, 
or substitution of leaf-bud for flower-bud, in that it occurs at 
a different stage. Heterotaxy is due to excess of nutrition, 
Chloranthy rather to injury or some debilitating cause: the 
discrepancies in the assigned causes for the conditions above 
mentioned may perhaps in great measure be attributed to the 
different period at which the cause in question operated V 
While change of flower-bud to leaf-bud may be due to there 
being less necessity for speedy seeding, owing to abundant 
food, change of portions of a flower would rather point to the 
inability on the part of the plant to complete the formation 
of the expensive reproductive organs, and would suggest the 
production, instead of these organs, of the more immediately 
useful organs of assimilation. 
There does not appear to be any insect or other injury to 
the flower in Nymphaea , and the close-fitting calyx and 
masses of hairs would render this lily quite as able to resist 
attack as any other variety of the species in the tanks. M. Grin, 
in the Revue Horticole, 1868, states that, by early excision 
of the carpels, it is possible to change a flower to a leafy bud ; 
but the youngest bud I have examined shows no indica- 
tions of the entrance of any insect, nor of the hypertrophy of 
1 Masters, p. 280. 
I 
