Page:The Journal of Indian Botany.djvu/149

Rh Pinus monophylla the spur shoots as a rule bear each a single needle, but two are occasionally present. Masters found by studying early stages that two leaf-rudiments are always produced, but that one of them generally becomes arrested at an early stage."

A paper on the comparative anatomy of the needles of the seed- lings and mature plants is in preparation.

The main conclusions of the paper may be stated as folllows:—
 * 1. Spurs with more or less than three needles in the adult

plants of Pinus longifolia as seen in Lahore are extremely rare.
 * 2. Spurs with more or less than three leaves are very common

in seedlings. Fifty-seven per cent, seedlings possesses such abnormal spurs.
 * 3. Spurs with 4-leaves are the commonest of all, being 83.8% of all abnormal shoots.
 * 4. The conclusion is drawn from these facts that a 3-leaved spur has been derived from a spur with more leaves, that the spur is equivalent to an ordinary shoot and that pines with a small number of needles in their spurs are more highly specialised than species with a larger number of needles.