294 
H. F. Wernham. 
complexities in relation to pollination involve the reduction of the 
andrcecium to two stamens, which are fused together and with the 
style to form a gynostemium. The stigma lies in a cavity at the 
apex of this columnar structure, and is concealed by the anthers ; at 
a touch from a visiting insect the irritable column springs from 
one side of the flower to the other, dusting the visitor with pollen, 
and at the same time exposing the stigma. The mechanism 
provides a very specialized form of pollen-presentation. 
Goodeniacea are of especial interest in so far as they exhibit 
features which connect them with the ancestral Campanal Stock 
on the one hand and with Compositse on the other. In the first 
place, epigyny is not an established character; the ovary is not 
uncommonly semi-superior. The tendency to reduction in carpels, 
loculi, and ovules, is clearly traceable; normally the ovary is 
bilocular with few ovules in each loculus. In some cases the septum 
is imperfect; in others there is but a single ovule in each loculus. 
The climax of these tendencies is reached in Brunoniaceae,—now 
generally regarded as a tribe of Goodeniaceae. Its affinities with 
the latter are obvious, in view of the indusiate stigma of the 
individually zygomorphic flowers ; but the group would appear to 
have some claim to family rank, with the critical characters of the 
inflorescence, which is an involucrate capitulum, and of the 
ovary, which is unilocular, with a single ovule, and quite superior. 
The case would appear to be one of evolutionary advance con- 
vergently in the direction of Compositae, and this is indicated in the 
diagram on page 230; the pappose calyx of the latter is fore¬ 
shadowed in the setaceous feathery calyx-segments of Brunonia. 
But the essential affinities of the latter with the line of Goodenia- 
ceae are recognizable in the light of the individual zygomorphy of the 
flowers, and the superior ovary. 
Composite e. The other line leading from the Campanal Stock 
is determined by the aggregation of flowers, which culminates in the 
composite capitula. This aggregation is accompanied—conceivably 
in the relation of cause and effect, by reduction of the ovules to 
one, contained in an inferior unilocular ovary composed of two 
carpels. The bicarpellary condition as the climax of the economy 
tendency in the ovary has been insisted upon and illustrated from 
time to time throughout these chapters; and the solitary ovule 
borne in the unilocular ovary is obviously in keeping with the close 
approximation of the florets, if only in respect of the merely phy¬ 
sical consideration of space. Again, the biological advantage of 
