Organization in Phcenogamous Plants, 245 



yond the ovule, and thus form the parenchyma of the embryo : 

 but I should exceed the limits of this essay were 1 farther to 

 follow up the formation of these cells. 3rd. Lastly, the iden- 

 tity of the embryo and the pollen-tube is farther supported by 

 the fact, that in such plants as bear several embryos there are 

 always precisely the same number of pollen-tubes present as 

 we find embryos developed. 



The most important result of these facts, and which I shall 

 not now attempt to carry out in its full extent, but content 

 myself with alluding to, is that the sexual classification hitherto 

 adopted in botany is directly false. For if the ovulum be un- 

 derstood in physiology to represent that material foundation 

 from which the new being becomes immediately developed, 

 and if we term that portion of the organism in which this ma- 

 terial commencement is deposited before it becomes developed 

 the female organ, whilst that part which calls into action 

 or promotes the development of the germ by means of its 

 potential effects is termed the male organ, it is evident that 

 the anther of the plant is nothing but a female ovarium 

 and each grain of pollen the germ of a new individual. 

 On the other hand, the embryo-sac only works potentially, 

 determining the organization and development of the material 

 foundation, and for this reason therefore ought to be termed 

 a male principle, were we not to consider, perhaps more cor- 

 rectly, (v/ithout embarrassing ourselves with lame analogies 

 taken from the animal kingdom) that the embryo-sac merely 

 conveys new organizable fluids by means of transudation and 

 thus only serves the office of nourishment*. 



Secondly, the process of the development of the embryo, 

 already described, easily establishes the fundamental unity 

 of the Phanerogamia and those Cryptogamia in which the 

 sporules are evident conversions of the cellular tissue of the 

 foliaceous organs or leafy expansions, since the same part in 

 both furnishes the groundwork of the new plant in both groups, 

 and the only difference existing between the two is this ; — in 

 the Phanerogamia a previous formative process in the interior 

 of the plant precedes the period of latent vegetation, whilst in 

 the Cryptogamia the sporule (the grain of pollen) develops it- 

 self to a plant without previous preparation. Difficulties never- 



• The embryo-sac retains this nourighing function in most of the albumi- 

 nous seeds until a later period, that of germination, for nutriment accumu- 

 lates in the cells, which gradually fill up the whole of the interior of the 

 embryo-sac, which becoming afterwards converted into fluid is appropriated 

 to the demands of the young plant. In the seeds which have a central al- 

 bumen (the embryo periphericiis)^ the albumen is merely a residuum of the 

 nucleus, and the space which was occupied during the earlier stages by the 

 embryo-sac is now entirely occupied, in the mature seed, by the embryo alone. 



