ALDniDGE ON POLLEN. 87 



I ought, perhaps, to have been pleased with this confirmation 

 of my researches; but, I must confess, I felt my mortality on 

 this occasion ; it was too bad to lose the labour of years in 

 this manner; and I hastened to examine the writings of my 

 German contemporaries, to ascertain whether they really had 

 anticipated me. 



This introduced me to a memoir by Fritzche, contained 

 in the Transactions of learned Foreigners, published by the 

 Royal Academy of St Petersburg, and as this is the latest 

 work on the subject containing his own observations, together 

 with an examination of the labours of others, and as the 

 Memoir is likewise replete with new and most interesting 

 matter, I shall present a digest of its contents to the readers 

 of this Journal. 



I shall first quote a passage, which will sufficiently demon- 

 strate, that my views with respect to the process of impreg- 

 nation, are not identical with his. 



" To perceive and rightly understand in difficult cases, 

 the details of external forms, I was obliged to make use of 

 certain reagents and means, by whose assistance I was enabled 

 in a former treatise to insert a description of forms. The 

 objects of my inquiry in the employment of acids, has to a 

 certain extent failed : I fully described in my treatise the ef- 

 fects of these on the Pollen; but their office has since been 

 misunderstood by many persons. It has been supposed, for 

 example, to be my opinion, that the protrusion of the inner 

 mass, under the influence of acids, upon the apertures of the 

 Pollen, and which in many cases, has the appearance of a 

 little tube, is the actual tube, which through the stigmatic 

 tissue, produces fertilization. To justify myself against this 

 supposition, which I am fully prepared to disprove, I need 

 merely quote a passage from page 35 of my treatise : — ' The 

 expression, tube (schlauche), which I have frequently employed 

 as the name of the gutlike protrusion, which constitutes the pro- 

 longation expelled by acids, is certainly misapplied, since it is 

 not surrounded by any membrane ; but as this ?nass proceeds 

 from the same part as the real tube, that by its action produces 



