On “ Fasciation .” 
59 
it! If the chalaza he indeed situated here, what part of the ovule, 
I would ask, is represented hy the tissue below it. This strange 
history is beyond my comprehension ! The nature of the vascular 
system, 1 am convinced, cannot be a guide to the morphological 
history ot the parts which it supplies, for it is a plastic tissue, being 
laid down just wherever it is needed. In my opinion “Archisperm ” 
and “ Hyposperm,” except from a purely descriptive point of view, 
are myths. The entire ovule is as much the “ real ovule ” as is the 
entire theoretical ovule shewn in Fig 1, and the so-called “inter¬ 
calated ” tissue is only ontogenetically—not phylogenetically—- 
younger than the upper region where the parts are free. 
The phenomenon termed by Celakovsky “negative dedoublement” 
which occurs in flowers and elsewhere consists in a congenital or 
ideal fusion of two or more petals, stamens, &c., where in allied 
living forms or in the ancestors of the plants concerned, the two or 
more organs exist, separate and distinct from each other, as in the 
genus Veronica where the large posterior petal results from the 
phylogenetic fusion of the two posierior lateral petals of other 
members of the order. 
An interesting example of normal fusion occurring between two 
organs of differing morphological value is afforded by the “ winged” 
peduncle of the inflorescence of the Lime ( Tilia ) ; here the bract is 
congenitally concrescent with the stalk of its axillary flowering- 
branch. We may safely assume that this is a secondary modifi¬ 
cation, and that in the ancestors of the Lime bract and inflorescence 
were free and independent. 
In the formation of an inferior ovary, as in the Apple and the 
Daffodil, the peduncle grows up around the superior ovary, 
congenitally fusing with it, and raising all the other parts of the 
flower into a position overtopping it. An interesting analagous 
illustration of the principle of congenital union occurring between 
two objects which were once distinct, we may obtain from the 
animal kingdom in the case of the Peacock; the central blue disc 
in the ocellus of the tail-covert which lies across the shaft of the 
feather, has a proximal indentation; this latter is an index to the 
probable fact that in the ancestral form there were two ocelli; one 
on either side of the shaft, which have become incompletely fused 
together. As a matter of fact, in the allied gallinaceous bird the 
Peacock-pheasant ( Polyplectron ), these two ocelli occur as a normal 
feature in this very position. 
If wc turn now to certain abnormal cases of this “ideal” fusion ; 
