Dr. G. Dickie on the Physiology of Fecundation in Plants. 5 



cludenti. Tentacula nulla. Branchia styliformes dorsi late- 

 ribus utrinque affixse. Anus subposticus in medio dorso. Aper- 

 tura sexualis pone caput in latere dextro. 



Species unica A. modest a^, Loven. 



Hob* in limo, locis maritimis parum profundis. J 



II. — Contributions to the Physiology of Fecundation in Plants, 

 By G. Dickie, M.D., Lecturer on Botany in the University 

 and King's College of Aberdeen f. 



[With a Plate.] 



Although many interesting observations respecting fecundation 

 in plants were contributed by the older botanists, it is chiefly to 

 observers of the present century that we owe the facts now known 

 respecting the structure of the ovule, its developuient previous 

 to, and further progress after impregnation. The contributions 

 of Brown, Amici, Brongniart, Mirbel and others to this depart- 

 ment are invaluable, and when Schleiden in 1837 announced the 

 ''grand doctrine ^^ as it has been called, that the extremity of the 

 pollen-tube reaches the embryo-sac, indents it, carries it before 

 it, and is itself then actually converted into the embryo, physio- 

 logists who formerly had written on this subject were stimulated 

 to repeat their inquiries, new observers also entered the field, 

 and the rash generalization of the observer alluded to has actually 

 been the means of furnishing important additions to our know- 

 ledge of this most interesting branch of vegetable physiology. It 

 can scarcely be doubted that much still rerfiains to be known re- 

 specting this subject, and judging from the history of its progress, 

 an accurate and complete acquaintance with it can only be arrived 

 at by degrees and by the efforts of diff*erent observers. The 

 quaint remarks of Nehemiah Grew, in his ' Anatomy of Plants,' 

 appear to be so applicable to this matter, that no apology need 

 be made for quoting them ; he says, " That nothing hereof re- 

 maineth further to be known is a thought not well calculated. 

 For if we consider how long and gradual a journey the know- 

 ledge of nature is, and how short a time we have to proceed 

 therein ; as on the one hand we shall conclude it our ease and 

 profit to see how far others have gone before us, so shall we be- 

 ware on the other, that we conceive not unduly of nature, whilst 



* Though Loven 's specific name, modestug, was evidently given to con- 

 strast with ornatus, the name of Ehrenberg's species, I have nevertheless ab- 

 tained from changing it, though the congeneric relationship with Stiliger 

 has been broken, and the name- been consequently deprived of its original 

 significance. 



t Read before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Nov. 13, 1845. 



