322 FACTIONS OP 



Tournefort and Pontedera supposed the 

 pollen to be of an excrementkious nature, 

 and thrown off as superfluous. But its being 

 so curiously and distinctly organized in every 

 plant, and producing a peculiar vapour on 

 the accession of moisture, shows, beyond 

 contradiction, that it has functions to per- 

 form after it has left the anther. The same 

 writers conceived that the stamens might 

 possibly secrete something to circulate from 

 them to the young seeds ; an hypothesis to- 

 tally subverted by every flower with sepa- 

 rated organs, whose stamens could circulate 

 nothing to germens on a different branch or 

 root; a difficulty which the judicious Tourne- 

 fort perceived, and was candid enough to 

 allow. 



munication to Dr. Watson, 'printed in the preface of 

 Lee's Introduction to Botany, it is called Palma major 

 folllsjialeUijormlbus, which seems appropriate to Rkapis 

 JlahelliformiS) Alt. Hort. Kew. v. 3. 473 j yet Linnaeus* 

 in his Dissertation on this subject, expressly calls it 

 Phoenix dactylifere, the Date Palm, and says he had in 

 his srarden many vigorous plants raised from a portion 

 of th« seeds above mentioned. The great success of the 

 experiment, and the u fan-shaped" leaves, make me ra- 

 ther take it tor the Rhapls, a plant not well known to 

 Linnaeus-, 



