rdance with which a deviation from the customary form results. The
particular organ was never anything else than what it is; it has not
been metamorphosed in the ordinary sense of the word; for instance, in a
double flower, where the stamens are, as it is said, changed or
metamorphosed into petals, no absolute change really has taken
place--the petal was never a stamen, although it occupies the position
of the latter, and may be considered a substitute for it.

The term metamorphosis, then, really implies an alteration in the
organizing force, taking effect at a very early period of the life of
the flower, at or before the period when the primitive aggregation of
cells, of which it is at that time composed, becomes separated or
"differentiated" into the several parts of the flower. In other words,
the "development" of the flower pursues a different course from what is
usual. In the preceding sections the effects of arrest and of excess in
this process have been partly treated of; other deviations arising from
similar causes will be mentioned elsewhere, but, under the present
heading, are specially included cases not of merely diminished or
increased, but of perverted development; the natural process is here not
necessarily checked or enhanced, but it is changed. Hence, in the
present work, the term metamorphy is employed to distinguish cases where
the ordinary course of development has been perverted or changed. As it
is applied solely for teratological purposes, the ordinary acceptation
of the term, as nearly synonymous with "development," is not interfered
with.

In order to avoid other possible misapprehensions, the terms retrograde
and progressive metamorphosis employed by Goethe are not herein used,
their place being, to a great extent, supplied by the more intelligible
expressions arrest or excess of development.[244]

FOOTNOTES:

[244] See Goethe, 'Versuch. der Metam. der Pflanzen,' 1790. English
translation by Emily M. Cox, in Seemann's 'Journal of Botany,' vol. i,
1863, p. 327. For a brief sketch of the origin and progress of the
theory of vegetable morphology, prior to the publications of Wolff,
Linne, and Goethe, as well as for an attempt to show what share each of
these authors had in the establishment of the doctrine, the reader is
referred to an article in the 'Brit. and For. Medico-Chirurgical
Review,' January, 1862, entitled "Vegetable Morphology: its History and
Present Condition," by Maxwell T. Mas