29 



now in the excellent, though it is true, elementary work, 

 published in the last year (1835) by the son and pupil of our 

 great master, Alphonse DeCandolle, we see the same doctrine 

 of the organization of the carpel, which his father himself has 

 admitted is not sufficient for the explanation of many pheno- 

 mena. He still says : the carpel consists of a metamorphosed 

 leaf folded in two lengthwise, and from the thickened margins 

 of which proceed the ovules; while afterwards the seeds are 

 formed like the leaf-buds proceeding from the margins of the 

 leaves of the Bryophyllum calycinum Salisb. (Verea pinnata, 

 Spr.) 



It may appear to many almost enigmatical, why DeCan- 

 dolle, so zealous a searcher after truth, who from his numerous 

 services to science, could not run the least risk of any taint to 

 his fame by the recognition of a fault or of any partial views, 

 should not have taken up Richard, who, in the 6th Brussels 

 edition of his Elemens de Botanique et de Physiologie vegetale, 

 1833, p. 136, says as follows : " Cette reunion, cette soudure 

 des deuxbords opposes de lafeuille carpellienne se fait constam- 

 ment au moyen d'un corps intermediaire compose de tissu cel- 

 lulaire et de vaisseaux nourriciers, et qui tire son origine de la 

 partie de la tige ou du pedoncule d'on nait le carpelle ; c'est sur 

 cette partie seulement, et jamais sur le bord meme de lafeuille 

 carpellienne que sont attaches les ovules ou rudimens des 

 graines." The cause of this apparent obstinacy of DeCandolle 

 and his whole school, lies, in my opinion, in this, that the party 

 of his adversaries, not resting upon the general laws of orga- 

 nization, nor on data furnished by nature, and not agreeing 

 with the ruling theory as being merely an indeterminate ob 

 scure sensation, only repeat, in different words, almost the 

 same thing- which Linnaeus and his followers had said a cen- 

 tury before on the receptaculum proprium of the seeds ; 

 describing, if I may so express myself, ignorantly, the phe- 

 nomena they observe, without investigating, so as to render 

 complete, their organographic meaning. 



It is to the acute countryman of Linnaeus , Agardh, late 

 professor of Botany at Lund, that the honour is due, on the 

 one hand, of having pointed out the errors of DeCandolle's 

 theory, and on the other, of having applied to the flower and 

 to the fruit the general law of vegetable organization; accord- 

 ing to which there always appears in the axilla of the leaf a 



