BOTANTCAL INFORMATION. 57 



very credible, have been remarked at different periods, and always on 

 dioecious plants. Fresenius affirms ('Linnsea/ 1839) that the Datisca 

 cannabina, female, fructifies very well without the concurrence of the 

 male. It should be the same, according to M. Lecocq, with the female 

 Spinach, and, according to M. Tenore, at Naples, with the Pistacia 

 Narbonensis (Ann. des Sc. Nat. 4eme serie, 1. 1, p. 328), which Boccone 

 (Museo di Piante, p. 148) affirms equally to have observed on other 

 species of Pistacia. Testimonies so numerous and so in accordance 

 scarcely permit the reality of the formation of embryo in plants with- 

 out the participation of the usual fecundizing agent to be called in 

 question. It remains to be learnt how long the species would be pre- 

 served if they were reduced artificially to this mode of propagation. 

 In every case a new view of observations (which it was well to point 

 out) is opened to embryologists." 



[That description of generation to which the above detailed cases 

 belong is, in my opinion, best expressed by the term "Parthenogenesis" 

 restricted, as has already been done entomologically by C. Th. E. von 

 Siebold, to the development of the ovules without the agency of the 

 male principle, the " lucina sine concubitu " of the older naturalists, 

 and not extended, as has been done by Richard Owen in his excellent 

 work c On Parthenogenesis, or the successive production of procreating 

 individuals from a single Ovum (London, 1849),' to the process of 

 germination observable in certain esexual, viviparous bugs. Simulta- 

 neously with Naudin's interesting paper (for the above version of which 

 I must consider myself responsible), there appeared an entomological 

 work, indirectly bearing upon the question, 'Wahre Parthenogenesis 

 bei Schmetterlingen und Bienen, by C. Th. E. von Siebold (Leipzig, 

 1856)/ in which a Parthenogenesis is shown to exist in Psyche Helix, 

 Solenobia clathrella and lichenella, Bombyx Mori and Apis mellifica ; 

 and a paper by Alexander Braun, confirming the Parthenogenesis of 

 Ccelebogyne, and showing it to exist in Chara crinita, was read at the 

 Meeting of the German Naturalists and Physicians at Vienna, Septem- 

 ber 18, 1856. Finally, I may be allowed to add that I have reviewed 

 the present state of the whole question in two leading articles in the 

 ' Bonplandia,' January 5 and February 1, 1857.— BerthoU Semumn.] 



VOL. IX. 



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