[243] Cited in 'Bull. Soc. Bot. France,' vol. xiii (Rev. Bibl.), p. 81.
PART III.
METAMORPHY.
Much of the objection with which Goethe's famous essay on the 'Metamorphosis of Plants' was met on its publication may be traced to a misapprehension of the sense in which Goethe employed the word. As used by him, it had nearly the same signification as now applied to the word development by organogenists. It does not necessarily imply that there has been a change in any particular organ, but rather that there has been, to some extent, a change in the plan of construction, in accordance 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, Linné, 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. Masters.
CHAPTER I.
PHYLLODY.
This condition, wherein true leaves are substituted for some other organs,[245] must be distinguished from Virescence, q. v., in which the parts affected have simply the green colour of leaves, without their form or structure. The appearance of perfect leaves, in place of other organs, is frequently looked on as due to retrograde metamorphosis, or to an arrest of development. But this is not strictly correct; for instance, suppose a petal, which is very generally merely the sheath of a leaf, with the addition of colouring matter, to be replaced by a perfect leaf, one in which all three constituent parts, sheath, stalk, and blade, are present, it surely can hardly be said that there has been any retrogression or arrest of development in the formation of a complete in place of an incomplete organ. The term retrograde here is used in a purely theoretical sense, and cannot be held to imply any actual degradation. Morphologically, as has been stated, the case is one of advance rather than the reverse, and hence the assignment of instances of this nature to a perversion of development, rather than to a diminution or to an exaltation of that process, seems most consistent with truth. The affected organs have really undergone no actual change, simply the direction of the organising force has been altered at a very early state, so that the usual differentiation of parts has not taken place.