226 Bower. — Imperfect Sporangia in certain 
Morphology, Wigand raised an anti-evolutionary protest 1 , 
maintaining that an essential difference exists between the 
two, and that ‘ ablast ’ exists only in the imagination, as a 
consequence of the assumption of unity of type in large 
groups of plants. It is doubtless salutary that such protests 
should be made, and they should have the effect of checking 
the exuberance of those who would extend a ‘ Type-method * 
beyond due limits, in the study of living forms. Fortunately 
there is now less need for such warnings than in the early 
seventies, the present tendency being towards broader poly- 
phyletic views. 
At the time of its issue Wigand’s protest was suitably met 
by Eichler, who maintained that the conditions distinguished 
as * abort * and £ ablast 3 are not essentially different in kind, 
but only differ in degree. He points out that abortion itself 
is not susceptible of objective proof: ‘objectively we see 
nothing more than that cell-divisions occur, that a rudiment 
appears ; thus strictly speaking we observe that something 
develops, not that something is reduced. This may become 
a gland, an emergence, or what not. It is comparison, and 
usually the comparison with other species and genera, &c. — 
that is, the type-method — which teaches that it is a reduced 
organ, and what is its special category. Whenever the same 
comparative method leads even to the assumption of a com- 
plete suppression, where no rudiment of the organ is seen 
with the bodily eye, in my opinion that is, in point of fact, no 
more than one step further along the same course V This 
is the position which, within suitable limits, is at the founda- 
tion of the current view as to abortion of parts within the 
Angiospermic flower, and it is extended also to the vege- 
tative organs. 
The discussion above quoted related in the first place to 
parts such as stamens and carpels. But the same arguments 
are also applicable to individual sporangia. As an example, 
1 Darwinismus, i, p. 444. ‘ Der Abortus nach der Typen-Methode und nach 
der Descendenz-Theorie.’ 
2 Eichler, Bllithendiagramme, p. 52. 
