322 fCKCTIONS OV 



Tournefort and Pontedera supposed the 

 pollen to be of an excrementitious nature, 

 and thrown off as superfluous. But its being 

 so curiously and distmctly 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 wdth 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 

 foUisJlaheUiformilmii, which seems appropriate to Rhapis 

 flahelllformis, Alt. Hort. Kcw. v. 3. 473; yet Linnasus, 

 in his Dissertation on this subject, expressly calls it 

 Phcenix dactylifora, the Date Palm, and says he had in 

 his garden many vigorous plants raised from a portion 

 of the seeds above mentioned. The great success of the 

 experiment, and the " fan shaped" leaved, make me ra- 

 ther take it for the RhapiSy a plant not well known te 

 LinnEeus. . 



