ii 7 
Correspondence . 
In the last (March) number of this journal, (page 66). Dr. 
Rendle, in a very interesting article on the subject of the origin of 
the perianth (which I am glad that my own writing should have had 
the effect ol evoking) questions at several points the tenableness of 
my position. In reference to my statement that sporophylls pre¬ 
ceded in time all other kinds of leaves and that the latter must 
therefore have been derived from the former, the writer says: “ this 
need not imply the derivation of the perianth from sporophylls in the 
highest group of plants.” For “ the differentiation of foliage-leaf and 
sporophyll was an established fact before the evolution of the 
Angiosperm and there is therefore no d priori reason for deriving the 
floral envelopes in the latter group from sporophylls.” 
Dr. Rendle here refers to the direct and immediate origin of 
vegetative foliar organs, such as petals and sepals; for the possibility 
is not excluded that, at any rate, in some cases, the vegetative foliar 
organs may have taken, as it were, a step backward and become 
once more approximated to the fertile region of the axis (from which 
they were originally derived) in the form of a calyx or even of a 
corolla. As regards flowering plants generally this theory, in view 
of all the important and striking facts and arguments which have 
been brought under my notice, appears to possess but little plausi¬ 
bility as compared with the theory I have supported. 
Again, the writer finds it “ difficult to accept the statement in 
its entirety ” that calyx and corolla have both sprung from the 
andrcecium, adducing the argument that the most primitive flowers 
are unisexual and “ have presumably not been derived from an 
hermaphrodite type, yet we find in the female, as well as in the male, 
instances of a well-defined perianth, which in the case of the female 
could not have originated from an andioecium. Hence the origin of 
perianth from androecium cannot have been universal.” Now, I fail 
entirely to see why the most primitive flowers should not in certain 
characters be more advanced and modified than those of plants 
standing higher in the scale. The complex massing of the flowers 
in catkins is surely such a highly modified character. So is it also 
with their striking diclinous arrangements. On the general principle, 
to which I firmly adhere, that the undifferentiated must precede 
in time the differentiated, and union always precede disunion, it 
follows that in all departments of the vegetable kingdom, the separa¬ 
tion of the sexes must have been a secondary process, and herma¬ 
phroditism in all cases represent a more primitive state of affairs. 
Hence it follows that the perianth of a female flower could have 
been quite naturally derived from the stamens in the early herma¬ 
phrodite days, and may in some cases represent these stamens in 
their modified vegetative form. The whole matter is elaborated by 
Celakovsky in his work on the Flower. As to the case of the glands 
in the Willow-flower, if these represent a reduced perianth, then 
they must be regarded as of staminal origin ; the fact that they are 
more numerous in the male than in the female flowers need not 
necessarily have, either one way or the other, any bearing on the 
question at issue, being probably due to quite other causes. Nor 
do I see, in reference to the case of the Betuleae mentioned, why the 
female should be expected to exhibit necessarily a similarity of 
arrangement to the male flower; for the hermaphrodite flower might, 
surely, have become modified subsequently to the loss of its androecium ? 
