HOMOTYPOSIS IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 
325 
one of them be available for measurement or counting. I bad long fixed my eye on 
the members of the whorls of the woodruff. They were so fascinatingly easy to 
collect and count ; they exhibited such a moderate amount of variation, and one felt 
sure the collecting, counting, tabulating, and calculating could all be done in the 
inside of a week ; and the impulse to such a light task after the elaborate work 
on the earlier series was very great. Professor F. O. Oliver and others warned me 
that the memljers of the whorls were differentiated in their origin^ and also in their 
position on the stem, and that such a series was unsuited to illustrate the degree of 
resemblance between undifferentiated like organs. However, the task seemed, 
comparatively speaking, so easy that I felt I would undertake it, if only to compare 
with the Nigella Hispanica, and ascertain in another case how differentiation does 
weaken the degree of resemblance of like parts. I accordingly collected 201 single 
sprays of woodrufft well distributed along about a mile of lane on the liaiik of a 
hedgerow facing soutli. These were gathered at Great Hampden, Buckinghamshire. 
In countino- the members on the whorls I soon found evidences of differentiation in 
O 
position, the whorls towards the top of the spray having, as a rule, fewer memliers 
than those lower down. The following is the table of frecpiency of different pairs of 
whorls ;—• 
Table XVH.—Woodruff Great Hampden. 
Number of Mernhers OH First Jlltorl. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 
8. 9. 
10. 
Totals. 
4 
8 
8 
41 
7 
1 — 
65 
5 
8 
32 
273 
126 
91 , 4 
— 
534 
6 
41 
273 
2376 
1363 
1150 41 
4 
5248 
7 
7 
126 
1363 
1216 
953 34 
3 
3702 
8 
1 
91 
1150 
953 
1284 54 
2 
3535 
9 
— 
4 
41 
34 
54 4 
—• 
137 
10 
— 
— 
4 
3 
2 _ 
— 
9 
Totals ... 
65 
534 
5248 
3702 
3535 137 
9 
13230 
I now give the numerical statement of the constants deduced from the aliove table 
and tlie frequency distribution of the whorls :— 
* Some of the members of the whorls are true leaves and others modified stipules, 
t They were broken off as close to the ground as possible ; they included all parts branching off above 
ground, but the forked sprays were only few in number. 
