Introduction - Page 2

related to one another almost like the males and females of ordinary unisexual animals. I will also give a full abstract of such observations as have been published since the appearance of my papers; but only those cases will be noticed, with respect to which the evidence seems fairly satisfactory. Some plants have been supposed to be heterostyled merely from their pistils and stamens varying greatly in length, and I have been myself more than once thus deceived. With some species the pistil continues growing for a long time, so that if old and young flowers are compared they might be thought to be heterostyled. Again, a species tending to become dioecious, with the stamens reduced in some individuals and with the pistils in others, often presents a deceptive appearance. Unless it be proved that one form is fully fertile only when it is fertilised with pollen from another form, we have not complete evidence that the species is heterostyled. But when the pistils and stamens differ in length in two or three sets of individuals, and this is accompanied by a difference in the size of the pollen-grains or in the state of the stigma, we may infer with much safety that the species is heterostyled. I have, however, occasionally trusted to a difference between the two forms in the length of the pistil alone, or in the length of the stigma together with its more or less papillose condition; and in one instance differences of this kind have been proved by trials made on the fertility of the two forms, to be sufficient evidence.

The second sub-group above referred to consists of hermaphrodite plants, which bear two kinds of flowers--the one perfect and fully expanded--the other minute, completely closed, with the petals rudimentary, often with some of the anthers aborted, and the remaining ones together with the stigmas much reduced in size; yet these flowers are perfectly fertile. They have been called by Dr. Kuhn cleistogamic, and they will be described in the last chapter of this volume. (Introduction/3. 'Botanische Zeitung' 1867 page 65. Several plants are known occasionally to produce flowers destitute of a corolla; but they belong to a different class of cases from cleistogamic flowers. This deficiency seems to result from the conditions to which the plants have been subjected, and partakes of the nature of a monstrosity. All the flowers on the same plant are commonly affected in the same manner. Such cases, though they have sometimes been ranked as cleistogamic, do not come within our present scope: see Dr. Maxwell Masters 'Vegetable Teratology' 1869 page 403.) They are manifestly adapted for self- fertilisation, which is effected at the cost of a wonderfully small expenditure of pollen; whilst the perfect flowers produced by the same plant are capable of cross-fertilisation. Certain aquatic species, when they flower beneath the water, keep their corollas closed, apparently to protect their pollen; they might therefore be called cleistogamic,