4 Biographical Memoir of Baron de Beauvois. 



with points beneath. The base of each small point is furnished, 

 at a certain period, with a powder, which he considered to be 

 the pollen. The points themselves, which he took for stigmata, 

 then bend to receive this fecundating powder. They afterwards 

 rise, and become swollen ; and there is at length discovered in 

 their interior another powder, which M. de Beauvois considered 

 as the seed. Something similar takes place in the agarics or 

 lamellated mushrooms. It is in the interior of the lamellae that 

 the seeds are found ; the pollen forms at the exterior, and is 

 easily collected by placing a plate of glass under the mushroom 

 at the moment when its head is developed. In the young cla- 

 variae, there is at the summit a mammilla, from which a fine 

 powder escapes, and is diffused over the surface of the plant. 

 The latter is furnished with small warts, each of which contains 

 seeds. 



In the lycoperdons, all botanists have observed a powder 

 which they have taken for the seed ; but as it is very combus- 

 tible, and floats on water, M. Beauvois preferred considering it 

 as a pollen. He thought that the seed is contained in a more 

 internal network, which has its exit by the same aperture as the 

 pollen ; and, in his opinion, it is at the moment when they issue 

 together, that one of these powders fecundates the other. He 

 afterwards compared this fecundation to that which the eggs of 

 the frog experience at the moment when they are laid. 



When the progress of the mind in men who have had origi- 

 nal conceptions is attentively studied, it is frequently perceived 

 that a first idea which has beamed upon them, has afterwards 

 directed them in all their researches, and even in all their sys- 

 tems. In their works it every where reappears under various 

 forms, and in the deficiency of experiments or facts, they em- 

 ploy their ingenuity in calling hypotheses to its aid. 



This was precisely the case with M. de Beauvois. He was 

 no sooner persuaded that the seed of certain mushrooms was in- 

 internal, and smaller than their pollen, and that it could be fe- 

 cundated, not in the ovary, and while yet tender and small, as 

 the seed of all other plants i& fecundated, but at the moment of 

 its escape, and when already fully developed, than he applied 

 his doctrine to the mosses. 



