

5 6 ON THE FORMATION OF SEEDS. 



much, but it was covered with flowers, which, without exaggerating, I 



may reckon at many thousands. All were females; in some I perceived 

 not the slightest vestige of anthers, and yet, remarkable to say, all, or 

 almost all, produced fruit now ripe, which gave to the withered branches 

 of the plant the appearance of long red bunches. I took a hundred of 

 them promiscuously, to examine their contents ; of this number there 

 was a dozen containing no seeds at all, forty-five with only one, twenty- 

 nine two, eleven three ; there were only two with four seeds, and one 

 alone which contained five. This result does not sensibly differ from 

 that presented by the plant which grew close to a male plant. 



" Yet while this second Bryony was literally covered with fruit, the 

 old plant, distant from it only a few yards, bore neither more nor less 

 fruit than it did in the preceding years. We cannot say then that in 

 both fecundation may have been effected by insects carrying pollen of 

 the species, since it is evident that they would have equally taken it to 

 both, and that both in consequence would have equally borne fruit. 

 Now, as I have just said, the difference in this respect was enormous. 

 I can only explain it to myself by the particular individual dispositions ; 

 in other terms, by veritable idiosyncrasies. 



" In order to assure myself that the quality of the dioecious plant 

 has its origin in a measure in the causes of this anomalous fecundity, 

 I made a fair experiment on this point, on a single specimen of Eeba- 

 Hum elaterium, planted expressly in the same enclosure. During more 

 than two months I took away all the male flowers, as the buds made 

 their appearance, in such a manner that none could open and furnish 

 pollen fit to effect fecundation. All the female flowers, to the number 

 of more than a hundred, which showed themselves during the time 

 that the suppression of the male flowers was going on, perished in 

 eight days after their blooming, without their ovary showing the least 

 swelling ; but they set their fruit as soon as these continuous castra- 

 tions ceased. We saw here then repeated that which I have already 

 remarked about the Ricinus, the absolute unfecundation of the female 

 flowers, through default of the male flowers, in a monoecious plant, 

 while that another plant of the same Family, and allied by its organi- 

 zation, but dioecious, does not cease to fructify and to produce fertile 

 seeds, even in the entire absence of any male to fccuudize it. 



" Other facts of the same kiud, that I have not myself observed, but 

 which the authority of the name of those who produced them renders 



