29 
now in the excellent, though it is true, elementary work, 
published in the last year (1835) by the son and pupil of our 
great master, Alphonse DeCandolle, we see the same doctrine 
of the organization of the carpel, which his father himself has 
admitted is not sufficient for the explanation of many pheno- 
mena. He still says: the carpel consists of a metamorphosed 
leaf folded in two lengthwise, and from the thickened margins 
of which proceed the ovules; while afterwards the seeds are 
formed like the leaf-buds proceeding from the margins of the 
leaves of the Bryophyllum calycinum Salisb. (Verea pinnata, 
Spr.) 
lt may appear to many almost enigmatical, why DeCan- 
dolle, so zealous a searcher after truth, who from his numerous 
services to science, could not run the least risk of any taint to 
his fame by the recognition of a fault or of any partial views, 
should not have taken up Richard, who, in the 6th Brussels 
edition of his Elémens de Botanique et de Physiologie végétale, 
1833, p. 136, says as follows: ‘‘ Cette réunion, cette soudure 
des deux bords opposés de lafeuille carpellienne se fait constam- 
ment au moyen d’un corps intermédiaire composé de tissu cel- 
lulaire et de vaisseaux nourriciers, et qui tire son origine de la 
partie de la tige ou du pedoncule d’on nait le carpelle; c’est sur 
cette partie seulement, et jamais sur le bord méme de la feuille 
carpellienne que sont attachés les ovules ou rudimens des 
graines.” The cause of this apparent obstinacy of DeCandolle 
and his whole school, lies, in my opinion, in this, that the party 
of his adversaries, not resting upon the general laws of orga- 
nization, nor on data furnished by nature, and not agreeing 
with the ruling theory as being merely an indeterminate ob- 
scure sensation, only repeat, in different words, almost the 
same thing which Linneus and his followers had said a cen- 
tury before on the receptaculum proprium of the seeds; 
describing, if I may so express myself, ignorantly, the phe- 
nomena they observe, without investigating, so as to render 
complete, their organographic meaning. 
It is to the acute countryman of Linneus, Agardh, late 
professor of Botany at Lund, that the honour is due, on the 
one hand, of having pointed out the errors of DeCandolle’s 
theory, and on the other, of having applied to the flower and 
to the fruit the general law of vegetable organization; accord- 
ing to which there always appears in the axilla of the leaf a 
4 
