Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/152

 the abortive leaves of the vetch and the abortive inflorescences of the vine are employed as tendrils. In other cases the abortive organ appears to be quite useless, as for instance many rudimentary leaves. All such useless organs, says De Candolle, exist only in consequence of the primitive symmetry of all organs. Finally the abortion may be so complete that no trace of the organ remains, of which case there are however two kinds, one where the organ is at first perceptible and afterwards quite disappears, as in the abortive loculaments in the fruit of the oak; in other instances no trace is to be seen from the first of the abortive organs, as happens with the fifth stamen of Antirrhinum.

All that has here been said might be alleged word for word in proof of the theory of descent, but our author is an adherent of the dogma of the constancy of species; what from his point of view he really means by abortion is difficult to say, for the object which is aborted is wanting. If species are constant, and therefore of absolutely distinct origin, we must not speak of abortion; we can only say that an organ which is present or large in one species is small or wanting in another. In introducing the idea of abortion De Candolle at once goes beyond the dogma of the constancy of species, without being clear in his own mind with regard to this important step. His proceeding shows that facts lead even a defender of constancy against his will to theories which run counter to that dogma. This is confirmed by his perception of the correlation of growth, which is connected with abortion; he points to the fact that owing to the disappearance of sexual organs in the disk-flowers of Viburnum Opulus the corollas become larger, as do the bracts of the abortive flowers of Salvia Horminum; similarly he regards the disappearance of the seeds in Ananas, Banana, and the Bread-fruit tree as the cause of the enlargement of the pericarps; it does not escape him, that the fertile flowerstalks in Rhus Cotinus remain naked, while an elegant pubescence forms on the barren ones; the leaf-like expansion