31 
with explanatory drawings; so that on my wishing to learn 
the opinion of the impartial DeCandolle on my composition, 
he answered me from Vienna on the 8th of April of the fol- 
lowing year 1834, ‘ Jene puis pas vous dire que yous m’ayez 
converti a votre opinion, mais jé vois trés bien qu'on puisse la 
soutenir et je ne négligerai pas de ’examiner avec attention.” 
It would be difficult to express in words the impatience with 
which, a twelvemonth after this answer of DeCandolle’s, I 
hastened to avail myself of the leave obtained from the kindness 
of my superiors to visit Geneva, to hear from his own mouth the 
judgment of my hitherto absent master, to see the result of the 
promised further investigations on this subject, &c. But the la- 
bours of so original an author in descriptive botany as DeCan- 
dolle, from whose pen all contemporary botanists await with so 
much impatience the fifth and following volumes of the Pro- 
dromus —these labours do not leave him a moment of leisure 
either for microscopical investigations, or even for simple 
observations in the botanical gardens, the direction of which 
his son, Professor Alphonse DeCandolle has now undertaken. 
Nevertheless DeCandolle, as amiable in personal intercourse 
as convincing in his writings, on my shewing him some of my 
drawings, agreed that the law of the production of buds (la 
loi du bourgeonnement) was the strongest argument against 
his theory, and himself encouraged me to prosecute my obser- 
vations, and to explain them with more detail. In the present 
memoir it is my intention to execute a part of this flattering 
commission. 
To the number of those appearances in the fruit of phe- 
nogamous plants unexplained by DeCandolle’s theory, belongs 
the situation of the placenta of botanical authors (ie. the 
main stalk of the seeds or spermophorum Link et mihi) in 
certain natural families where it is outside the carpels (Sper- 
mophorum extra carpellare mi/z). I have hitherto observed 
this position of the main seed stem in the Boraginezx, Labiate, 
Valerianex, Araliaceew and Umbellifere. 
For a long time a false opinion prevailed amongst Bo- 
tanists that the whole flower was but one organ, and even now 
that according to the latest theories the flower contains many 
organs more or less symmetrically arranged; they consider 
the place from whence proceed the sepals, the petals, the 
stamens, and the pistils, as a terminal nodus, whereas, by the 
