HIGHER AND LOWER PLANTS 
267 
chemistry, I will mention that sugar is not, in all plants, a 
reserve or plastic body, and in some few (for example, the 
sorghum cane *) it must be regarded rather as a waste pro¬ 
duct, and its advent in larger percentage after the maturity of 
growth marks the decay of the plant and attends its euthanasia. 
I have desired, by entering into all of the above particulars, 
to prepare for a consideration of the compounds which are 
formed by these chemical successions and occur through the 
plant kingdom. In treating of this subject I shall have so fre¬ 
quent occasion to speak of the different plant families that, for 
convenience, I shall use the order of evolution for flowering 
plants proposed by M. Edouard Heckel, 1 2 and which is repre¬ 
sented in the table. 
The author classes all these plants under three main parallel 
divisions, from the lowest of the apetalous, 3 mono- and dicoty¬ 
ledonous groups to their respective highest plants. These three 
main columns are divided at the same point into three general 
planes. On plane 1 are all plants of simplicity of floral elements 
or parts; for example, the black walnut with the simple flower 
contained in a catkin. On plane 2 are plants of multiplicity of 
floral elements, as the many petals and stamens of the rose; 
and, finally, the higher plants, as the orchids among the mo¬ 
nocotyledons, and the Composite among the dicotyledonous 
plants, come upon the third plane, or the division of conden¬ 
sation of floral parts. 
These three characteristics, simplicity, multiplicity, and con¬ 
densation of floral elements, are correspondingly repeated in 
1 “ On the Variations of Sucrose in Sorghum Saccharatum,” by H. W. Wiley, 
Botanical Gazette , vol. xii, March, 1887. 
2 Revue Scientifique , March 13, 1886. 
3 Heckel’s division of apetalous plants from mono- and di-cotyledonous 
groups has been criticised by some botanists as an artificial method of classi¬ 
fication. Since all botanical classifications have been declared, on botanical 
authority, in a measure artificial, the author does not feel called upon to 
apologize for introducing M. Heckel. She has found his scheme to answer 
her purposes, provisionally, more fully than other classifications, and she is 
indebted to him for a means of presenting her subject which would be other¬ 
wise impracticable. Further than this she is not responsible for advocating 
the classification. M. Heckel’s table is published with his paper, “Les Plantes 
et la Theorie de l’E volution,” in the Revue Scientifique , March 13, 1886. 
