paper “On the Organs and Mode of Fecundation in Or- 
chideae and Asclepiadeae’’ (Trans. Linn. Soc. 16 (1838) 
685-733), and it was through his critical investigations of 
the tissues of orchids in the furtherance of his knowledge 
of this subject that he noticed for the first time the nu- 
cleus of the cell and in defining it, hit on the exact term 
which later became adopted in the vocabulary of science. 
It is interesting to learn, from Brown’s remarks, of 
the obscurity that once surrounded what is today so ob- 
viously and so definitely implied by the sexual apparatus 
of the most simple species. There were two schools of 
thought regarding the methods of fecundation in the or- 
chids: one claiming that direct application of the pollen 
to the stigmas is necessary to bring about fecundation ; 
the other regarding direct contact between pollen and 
stigmas too difficult of accomplishment or altogether im- 
probable, and the proponents of this idea suggested other 
means than direct contact between pollen and stigmas 
by which the fecundating material reached the ovules. 
Brown concluded that the application of pollen to the 
stigmas is the only way in which impregnation of the 
ovules is effected, and referred to J. K. Wichter who was 
the first man to demonstrate experimentally that pollen 
must reach the stigmas if fertile seeds are to be produced 
and that if insects are excluded from the flowers fertile 
seeds fail to develop. This was in 1801.’ 
In 1862, before the Linnaean Society of London, 
“Teh zog niimlich Orchis bifolia in der Stube in Topfe, und hielt, so 
viel wie méglich, Insecten und dussere Zufaille von den Blumen ent- 
fernt. Jede Anthere blieb in ihrer hautigen Einlassung verschlossen, 
dagegen nahm ich bey einigen Blumen die Antheren mit einer Pin- 
cette heraus, und befruchtete die Narbe. Nur bey diesen schwoll 
nach einiger Zeit das Germen auf, und trug eine grosse Menge Saa- 
men;~—alle iibrigen blieben unfruchtbar.’’ J. K. Wachter, Rémer Ar- 
chiv fir die Botanik 2, (1801) 209. 
[2] 
