STAMENS AND PISTILS. 5'Sfil 



Both the conjectures just mentioned vanish 

 before one huninous experiment of Linnceus, 

 of all others the most easy to repeat and to 

 understand. He removed the anthers from 

 a flower of Glaucium phaniceum ,• Engl.Bot, 

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

 blossoms. Another morning he repeated the 

 same practice, only sprinkling the stigma of 

 that blossom, which he had last deprived of 

 its own stamens, with the pollen from an- 

 other. The flower first mutilated produced 

 no fruit, but the second afforded very perfect 

 seed. " My design," says Linnaeus, " was 

 to prevent any one in future 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 sta- 

 mens with respect to pistils is well worthy of 

 notice. The former are generally shortest in 

 drooping flowers, longest in erect ones. The 

 barren blossoms stand above the fertile 

 ones in Carex, Coiv, Arum, &c., that the 

 pollen may fall on the stigmas. This is the 

 more remarkable, as the usual order of Na- 

 ture seems in such plants, as well indeed 



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