686 Mr. Brown on the Organs and Mode of 



bable, and have consequently had recourse to other explnna- 

 tions of the function. 



In 1760, Haller, the earliest writer of the first class, in de- 

 scribing his Epipactis, states that the antheraj or pollen masses, 

 after leaving the cells in which they are originally inclosed, are 

 retained by the process called by him sustentaculum, the rostel- 

 lum of Richard, from which they readily fall upon the stigma*. 

 He adds, that both in this genus and in Orchis the stigma com- 

 municates by a fovea or channel with the ovarium. 



But as in 1742 he correctly describes the stigma of Orchis t, 

 and in his account of Epipactis :|; notices also the gland derived, 

 as he says, from the sustentaculum, and which is introduced 

 between and connects the pollen masses, his opinion on the 

 subject, though not expressed, is distinctly implied even at that 

 period : or as indeed it may be said to have been so early as 

 1736§, when he first described the channel communicating with 

 the ovarium, and considered it as being in the place of a 

 style. 



In 1763, Adanson|| states that the pollen masses are projected 

 on the stigma, of which his description is at least as satisfactory 

 as that of some very recent writers on the subject. He also de- 

 scribes the flower of an Orchideous plant as being monandrous, 

 with a bilocular anthera, containing pollen which coheres in 

 masses (a view of structure first entertained, but not published, 

 by Bernard de Jussieuf ) ; and he correctly marks the relation 

 both of the stamen and placentae of the ovarium to the divi- 

 sions of the perianthium. 



In 1777, Curtis, in the Flora Londinensis in his figure and 



* Orchid, class, constitut. in Act. Helvet. iv. p. IQO; 



t Hall. Enum. p. 262. f Id. p. 274. 



§ Meth. stud. bot. p. 21. 1| Fam. des Plant, ii. p. 69. 



il Juss. gen. pi. p. 66. 



account 



