STAMENS AND PISTILS. 253 



Tournefort and Pontcdera supposed the pollen to be 

 of an excrementitioLis nature, and thrown oft'as superflu- 

 ous. But its being so curiously and distinctly organiz- 

 ed in every plant, and producing a peculiar vapour on 

 the accession of moisture, shows, beyond contradiction, 

 that it has functions to perform 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 totally subverted by every 

 flower with separated organs, whose stamens could circu- 

 late nothing to germens on a different branch or root ; a 

 difficulty which the judicious Tournefort perceived, 

 and was candid enough to allow. 



Both the conjectures just mentioned vanish before • 

 one luminous experiment of Linnaeus, of all others the 

 most easy to repeat and to understand. He removed 

 the anthers from a flower of Glaiicium phceniceum ; 

 Engl. Bot. t. 1433, stripping off the rest of that day's 

 blossoms. Another morning he repeated the same prac- 

 tice, only sprinkling the stigma of that blossom, which 

 he had last deprived of its own stamens, with the pollen 

 from another. The flower first mutilated produced no 

 fruit, but the second afforded very perfect seed. " My 

 design," says Linnaeus, " was to prevent any one in fu- 

 ture from believing that the removal of the anthers from 

 a flower was in itself capable of rendering the germen 

 abortive." 



The usual proportion and situation of stamens with 

 respect to pistils is well worthy of notice. The former 

 ire generally shortest in drooping flowers, longest in 



