Origin of Species Variorum

when this occurs, the adherent nectary is quite aborted. When the colour is absent from only one of the two upper petals, the nectary is not quite aborted but is much shortened.

With respect to the development of the corolla in the central and exterior flowers, Sprengels idea that the ray-florets serve to attract insects, whose agency is highly advantageous or necessary for the fertilisation of these plants, is highly probable; and if so, natural selection may have come into play. But with respect to the seeds, it seems impossible that their differences in shape, which are not always correlated with any difference in the corolla, can be in any way beneficial: yet in the Umbelliferæ these differences are of such apparent importance — the seeds being sometimes orthospermous in the exterior flowers and cœlospermous in the central flowers, — that the elder De Candolle founded his main divisions in the order on such characters. Hence, as before remarked, we see that modifications of structure, viewed by systematists as of high value, may be wholly due to the laws of variation and correlation, without being, as far as we can judge, of the slightest service to the species.

We may often falsely attribute to correlated variation structures which are common to whole groups of species, and which in truth are simply due to inheritance; for an ancient progenitor may have acquired through natural selection some one modification in structure, and, after thousands of generations, some other and independent modification; and these two modifications, having been transmitted to a whole group of descendants with diverse habits, would naturally be thought to be correlated in some necessary manner. Some correlations are apparently due to the manner in which natural selection acts. ↑ For instance, Alph. de Candolle has