54 ON THE FORMATION OF SEEDS. 



♦ 



received opinions could not fail to find opposers ; but it had also its 

 supporters, among whom we must particularly mention Professor Bern- 

 hardt whose experiments would seem to leave little room for doubt. 

 However, general opinion was still inclined to see an impossibility in 

 fecundity without fecundation ; and it has not failed less than the re- 

 markable discovery of John Smith on the Ccelebogyne to force stubborn 

 minds to accept as possible and real (at least in some cases) the forma- 

 tion of seeds without previous fecundation. 



" I have for two years resumed the experiments of Spallanzani and 

 of Bernhardt and, like them, I have arrived at the conclusion that the 

 female Hemp can fructify without the participation of the male. A 

 female plant, isolated in the grounds of the Museum, and very distant 

 from some male specimens found in the Ecole de Botanique, furnished 

 me with the first supply of seeds which served for my projected experi- 

 ments. These seeds, sown in April, 1855, produced vigorous plants, 

 of which twenty females were left in the ground in an enclosure shut 

 in with walls, and separated from the Museum by the Eue Cuvier. 

 Four others, also females, were planted, before any blossoming, in small 

 pots, which I placed in the greenhouse of the Orangery, a garden sur- 

 rounded with walls on all sides, and containing no other specimen of 

 Hemp. All these plants flourished and fructified. They were frequently 

 inspected, and never did I perceive in them the least trace of male flowers, 

 which was very easy to execute on the four plants in pots, which were 

 left very loose, and were without any ramifications, in consequence of 

 the little nourishment they found in the small clod of earth in which 

 they grew. The seeds of these four plants were gathered singly, and 

 sown this year (1856). I have obtained from them forty plants, of 



which the males were all suppressed at the first appearance of their 

 buds. 



. " Four new female plants, placed like those of the preceding year in 

 small pots, were taken into a room situated in the second story of the 

 house occupied by M. Decaisne, and they were there so sequestered 

 that it was absolutely impossible for pollen of their species, or any pollen 

 whatsoever, to have reached them : nevertheless these plants bore fruit. 

 The most scrupulous examination, both of M. Decaisne and of myself 

 could not enable us to discover a single male flower amon** the female 

 ones, which they produced in a very great abundance, and of which 

 only a few have borne fruit, now almost ripe. 



