ANNALS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



XXV. — On the recent Doctrines of Vegetable Embryology. 

 By Herbert Giraud, Member of the Council of the 

 Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Ext. Mem. Med. Soc. 

 Edin. 



[With a Plate.] 



Notwithstanding the rapid progress which has of late been 

 made in developing the phaenomena attendant on the repro- 

 duction of plants, still the true theory of phanerogamic em- 

 bryology has not yet been fully established. The discoveries 

 of Amici, Brown, and Brongniart, proceeding so far in advance 

 of the old doctrines of Kaelreuter, Gaertner and Linnaeus, 

 gave, as it were, a fresh impulse to the inquiry regarding the 

 intimate nature of the origin and development of the embryo 

 in flowering plants ; hence, in this country, but more parti- 

 cularly on the continent, this subject has been prosecuted 

 with considerable zeal and activity ; and it has certainly re- 

 ceived much elucidation by the disclosure of phaenomena 

 hitherto little suspected. Still, however, the statements of 

 some of the most eminent of the continental phytologists are 

 of a very opposite nature, and the hypotheses to which they 

 would justly lead, are still more widely discrepant. I here 

 allude to the very discordant opinions, regarding the origin of 

 the embryo, entertained by Schleiden, Wydler, and many of 

 the German botanists on the one hand, and the views main- 

 tained by Mirbel, Spach, and Brongniart on the other. 



The facts and doctrines advanced by Schleiden and his follow- 

 ers have been made known to British botanists chiefly through 

 the medium of a translation by Dr. Wood of Bristol, published 

 in the L. and Ed. Philosophical Magazine for March 1838 ; 

 as, however, some of the readers of this paper may not yet be 

 aware of the views of Schleiden, I will venture shortly to de- 

 tail them ; that a general view may be taken of the disputed 

 points and of the question as it at present stands. According 



Ann. Nat. Hist. Vol.5. No. 31. June 1840. r 



