IINXEAN SOCIETY OP LONDON. Xl 



rapidly from a Frenchman ; the German supplies you with more 

 materials for study ; and thus you derive equal benefit from both. 



The cause of this diiference it is not my province to inquire into. It 

 may depend as much on social habits and language as on idiosyn- 

 crasy ; or the three may mutually react upon each other ; and there 

 are individual exceptions in both countries. Even the same indivi- 

 dual may be difierent according to the country he resides in and 

 the associates he is surrounded by. Kuiith, at Paris, produced the 

 * Nova Genera et Species,' a great work, remarkable for the intuitive 

 perception of genera and species, often from the most imperfect 

 materials. The same Kunth, at Berlin, worked out his ' Enumeratio 

 Plantarum,' a repertory of individual descriptions, without method 

 or contrasting characters. My object, however, in these remarks is 

 not the criticism of individuals, but merely to show the advantage 

 of keeping these national peculiarities in view in judging of the 

 results of recent labours in vegetable physiology. 



An important question in vegetable morphology, first brought 

 forward by Robert Brown, and a subject of much controversy in 

 later times, the gymnospermy of Conifers and their allies, has recently 

 been placed in a somewhat new light by a German physiologist. 

 The nucleus and, later, the seed proper (that is, the embryo and its 

 albumen) are in these plants enclosed in fewer envelopes than in any 

 other phsenogams. Many Monochlamyds or Monocotyledons have no 

 perianth or stamens round their female organs ; but in all, except these 

 Gymnosperms, the nucleus or embryo is enclosed in a simple or double 

 integument within, but distinct or distinguishable from, a carpellary 

 envelope. In Conifers and their allies the simple or double integument 

 alone covers the nucleus. R. Brown, after a long series of careful ob- 

 servations, published, in 1825, his conclusions that this simple or 

 double integument corresponded to that of the ovule and seed in other 

 Dicotyledons, and that Conifers have no ovary, style, or stigma*. 

 Lindley observed, in 1845 (and left the observation unaltered in 

 1853), that " about the accuracy of this view there is at this time 

 no difference of opinion." Since then, however. Payer and his dis- 

 ciple Baillon, founding their conclusions upon organogenesis, have 



* Strasburger, in an historical sketch of the progress of the question, points out 

 that Targioni-Tozzetti in 1810 enunciated views very similar to those afterwards 

 developed by Brown. Published, however, in a journal whidi had but very 

 little circulation, his notes remained almost unknown till attention was called 

 to them by Caruel in 1865. Strasburger quotes the passage (with some typo- 

 graphical errors), p. 174 of his ' Coniferen.' 



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