31 



with explanatory drawings ; so that on my wishing to learn 

 the opinion of the impartial DeCandolle on my composition, 

 he answered me from Vienna on the 8th of April of the fol- 

 lowing year 1834<, " Je ne puis pas vous dire que vous m'ayez 

 converti a votre opinion, mais je vois tres bien qu'on puisse la 

 soutenir et je ne negligerai pas de l'examiner avec attention." 

 It would be difficult to express in words the impatience with 

 which, a twelvemonth after this answer of DeCandolle's, I 

 hastened to avail myself of the leave obtained from the kindness 

 of my superiors to visit Geneva, to hear from his own mouth the 

 judgment of my hitherto absent master, to see the result of the 

 promised further investigations on this subject, &c. But the la- 

 bours of so original an author in descriptive botany as DeCan- 

 dolle, from whose pen all contemporary botanists await with so 

 much impatience the fifth and following volumes of the Pro- 

 dromus— these labours do not leave him a moment of leisure 

 either for microscopical investigations, or even for simple 

 observations in the botanical gardens, the direction of which 

 his son, Professor Alphonse DeCandolle has now undertaken. 

 Nevertheless DeCandolle, as amiable in personal intercourse 

 as convincing in his writings, on my shewing him some of my 

 drawings, agreed that the law of the production of buds (la 

 loi du bourgeonnement) was the strongest argument against 

 his theory, and himself encouraged me to prosecute my obser- 

 vations, and to explain them with more detail. Jn the present 

 memoir it is my intention to execute a part of this flattering 

 commission. 



To the number of those appearances in the fruit of phae- 

 nogamous plants unexplained by DeCandolle's theory, belongs 

 the situation of the placenta of botanical authors (i.e. the 

 main stalk of the seeds or spermophorum Link et mihi) in 

 certain natural families where it is outside the carpels (Sper- 

 mophorum extra carpellare mihi). I have hitherto observed 

 this position of the main seed stem in the Boraginese, Labiatae, 

 Valerianeae, Araliaceae and Umbelliferse. 



For a long time a false opinion prevailed amongst Bo- 

 tanists that the whole flower was but one organ, and even now 

 that according to the latest theories the flower contains many 

 organs more or less symmetrically arranged ; they consider 

 the place from whence proceed the sepals, the petals, the 

 stamens, and the pistils, as a terminal nodus, whereas, by the 



