and on various Plants related to them. ^ "' "' 307 



paper. And even granting that in ali, the seeds did consist of cellular tissue 

 and entangled connecting threads, my impression is that the germination 

 should have been properly observed before the very important foundation of 

 a subkingdom or even of a class should have been laid. 



I have not found the appearances presented by the seeds to be uniform ; 

 and the only plants I have examined that would apparently bear such a 

 hypothesis as that of being composed of a sporuliferous mass, are Mystrope- 

 talum and Sarcophyte. ' '.>' y.-i, il o) 



In all the others, Balanophora, Phceocordylis, Hydnora, Thismia, and I 

 believe Sapria, the seed contains or consists of a densely cellular homo- 

 geneous body, each cell containing granules and globules of an apparently 

 oleaginous fluid ; the appearance being that of some forms of albumen. 

 These bodies are, I have no doubt, the embryos described by Mr. Brown as 

 homogeneous and acotyledonous. Such he describes to exist in 7nany other 

 plants parasitic on roots, such as Orobanche, &c., and also in Orch'tdete. 'J'o 

 these I can add another very marked instance in Burmannia. 



To the observations of Mr. Brown regarding the existence of similar em- 

 bryos in many plants parasitic on roots, Dr. Lindley objects, limiting himself 

 hoivet}er to Orobanche ; and to Orchidece he applies an argument founded on 

 our limited knowledge of their structure, which seems to me exactly appli- 

 cable to Rhizanthew, and which, if it had been kept in view, would have 

 retained the various component parts of that class in what appear to me, at 

 least, to be their proper and subordinate places. 



It is also proper to observe here, that the celebrated L. C. Richard* has 

 represented the existence of an embryo in Cynomorium. This observation 

 of a botanist, who is considered by the first authorities as generally very 

 accurate!, is contradicted by M. Endlicher, who attributes M. Richard's error 

 to his haying reasoned from analogy;}:. But is the reasoning from analogy 

 more liable to error than that of an opposite tendency, on which M. Endlicher's 

 ideas of Rhizanthece appear to me chiefly founded ? 



I have before alluded to a deformity in appearance of the seeds of Sarco- 



* Memoires du Museum, viii. p. 423. t. 21. f. O, P. 

 t R. Brown, Linn. Trans, vol. xiii. p. 224, in the note. 

 i Meletemata Botanica, fasc. 11. p 9, line 19 &c. 



