position (see p. 100).

PART I.

INCREASED NUMBER OF ORGANS.

An augmentation in the number of parts may arise from several causes,
and may sometimes be more apparent than real. True multiplication exists
simply as a result of over-development; the affected organs are repeated
sometimes over and over again each in their proper relative position,
and without any transmutation of form.

Metamorphy, on the other hand, often gives rise to the impression that
parts are increased in number, when it may be that the stamens and
pistils, one or both, are not so much increased in number as altered in
appearance. The double anemones and ranunculus of gardens, amongst many
other analogous illustrations, may be mentioned. In these flowers, owing
to the petalody of the stamens and pistils, one or both, an impression
of exaggerated number is produced, which is by no means necessarily a
true one. Fission or lateral subdivision also gives rise to an apparent
increase in number; thus, some so-called double flowers, the elements of
which appeared to be increased in numbers, owe the appearance merely to
the laciniation or subdivision of their petals.

The French botanists, following Dunal and Moquin, attribute an increase
in the number of whorls in the corolla, and other parts of the flower,
to a process which they call chorisis, and they consider the
augmentation to be due to the splitting of one petal, for instance, into
several;--somewhat in the same manner as one may separate successive
layers of talc one from the other.

English botanists, on the other hand, have been slow to admit any such
process, because, in most instances, no alteration in the law of
alternation takes place in these double flowers, and in those few cases
where the law is apparently infringed, the deviation is explained by the
probable suppression of parts, which were they present would restore the
natural arrangement of the flower; and, that this is no imaginary or
purely theoretical explanation, is shown by some of the _Primulaceae_,
wherein a second row of stamens is occasionally present in the adult
condition, and renders the floral symmetry perfect.

The double daffodil, where there are from forty to fifty petaloid organs
instead of fifteen, and wherein each piece exhibits a more or less
perfect coronal lobe at the junction of the claw and the limb, has been
cited as an objection to chorisis, though it is difficult to see on what
grounds.

In