MASTERS OX THE EXISTENCE OE TWO FORMS OF PELORIA. 259 
So far as I am aware, the only writer who has distinctly called 
attention to the two forms, is my much lamented teacher, Edward 
Eorbes, who contrasts the two varieties, in a paper read before the 
Linnean Society, in June, 1848, upon Peloria as affecting certain 
specimens of Viola canina , gathered by himself in the Isle of Port¬ 
land. 
It is not my intention at this time to treat of the general subject 
of Peloria, but to confine myself to the illustration of the differences 
between the two forms of this deviation from the ordinary construction 
of the flower: nor shall I here cite many of the numerous figures 
and descriptions given by various authors, who have put such in¬ 
stances on record. A few illustrations will suffice to establish the 
fact, and these I prefer to select from my own experience, or from 
well-marked recent instances noted in various periodicals, reserving 
others for future more extended examination and discussion. 
Modern botanists have considered Peloria as the effect of an 
accidental recurrence to the regular type, from which the irregular 
form is the habitual deviation, or to use the words of Moquin Tan- 
don,* “ Une fieur peloriee n’est autre chose qu’une fleur regularisee.” 
The earliest discovered, and best known instance of this phenomenon, 
occurs in Linaria vulgaris , wherein, in place of a corolla with a single 
spur and a two-lipped limb, five spurs and a regularly five-lobed limb 
are met with. 
In this case it is evident that the regularity results from the 
increase in number of the ordinarily irregular portions. It is indeed 
a “ fleur regularisee”—a flower made regular. 
Contrast with this, the double Tropceolum, now common in gardens: 
the single Tropcsolum has a coloured calyx, provided with a long 
spur; in the double variety the calyx consists of five equal, green 
sepals. Here it is obvious, at a glance, that the regularity is not due, 
as in the Linaria , to an increase in the number of habitually irre¬ 
gular parts, but to a very different phenomenon, the entire absence 
of irregular parts. The parts of the flower, in the latter case, retain, 
throughout the whole of their existence, that regularity of outline 
and equality of proportion, which, according to the organogenic re¬ 
searches of Barneoud and others, obtains in initio in all flowers, no 
matter how irregular they afterwards become. Erom this it follows, 
that the notion commonly accepted among botanists from the time 
of the elder He Candolle, that peloriated flowers are the consequence 
of an accidental return to the regular type, holds good, not to the 
class of flowers to which they have constantly applied it, but to that 
other class, as illustrated by the double Tropceolum , which they have 
almost entirely overlooked. Moquinf indeed refers the latter class 
of eases to a group consisting of “ Irregular alterations of Form, or 
Deformities.” Such a classification of flowers, which, although ex- 
* Elem. Teratol. Veget. p. 186. 
f Op. cit. p. 162. 
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