=Prolification of the inflorescence.=--This consists in the formation of leaf-buds or of an undue number of flower-buds on the inflorescence. It must be distinguished from virescence, or the mere green colour of the floral organs, and from chloranthy, in which all or the greater portion of the parts of the flower are replaced by leaves. Prolification is, in fact, a formation of supernumerary buds, leafy or floral, as the case may be, these buds being sessile or stalked, the ordinary buds being not necessarily changed. Prolification of the inflorescence, like the other varieties, admits of subdivision, not only according to the foliar or floral nature of the bud, but according to its position, terminal or median and lateral. Terminal prolification of the inflorescence, whether leafy or floral, is hardly to be looked upon in the light of a malformation[105] seeing that a similar condition is so commonly met with normally, as in _Epacris_, _Metrosideros_, _Bromelia_, _Eucomis_, &c., wherein the leafy axis projects beyond the inflorescence proper; or as in _Primula imperialis_, in which plant, as also in luxuriant forms of _P. sinensis_, tier after tier of flowers are placed in succession above the primary umbel. Nevertheless, when we meet with such conditions in plants which, under ordinary circumstances, do not manifest them, we must consider them as coming under the domain of teratology. =Median foliar prolification of the inflorescence= is frequently met with in _Coniferae_, and has of late attracted unwonted attention from the researches of Caspary, Baillon, and others, on the morphology of these plants. The scales and bracts of the cone in these abnormal specimens frequently afford transitional forms of the greatest value in enabling morphologists to comprehend the real nature of the floral structure. It would be irrelevant here to enter into this subject; suffice it merely to say that an examination of very numerous specimens of this kind, in the common larch and in _Cryptomeria Japonica_, has enabled me to verify nearly the whole of Caspary's observations. A similar prolongation of the axis occurred in some of the male catkins of _Castanea vesca_, each of which had a tuft of small leaves at their extremity. In the common marigold and in _Lotus corniculatus_ I have also seen instances of this kind. Kirschleger[106] describes a tuft of leaves as occurring on the apex of the flowering spike after the maturation of the fruit in _Plantago_, and a similar growth frequently takes place in the common wallflower, in _Antirrhinum majus_, &c. In cases where a renewal of growth in the axis of inflorescence has taken place after the ripening of the fruit, the French botanists use the term recrudescence, but the growth in question by no means always occurs after the ripening of the fruit, but frequently before. Professor Braun cites the case of a specimen of _Plantago lanceolata_, in which the