Journal of Travel and Natural History 1 8 r 



DELPINO ON THE APPARATUS EOR 

 FECUNDATING PHANEROGAMOUS PLANTS.'' 



SIGNOR Delpino tells us that the observations recorded in 

 this memoir, are intended as a prodromus to a general work 

 on the apparatus and processes for fecundating flowers, in which he 

 proposes to recapitulate the observations and experiments of C. 

 Sprengel, Charles Darwin, U. Mohl, Frederick Hildebrand, L. C. 

 Treviranus, and his own. He tells us that they originated in his 

 having read the account of the mode in which the Barlia 

 longibracteata. Pari., is fecundated by the intervention of Xylo- 

 copa violacea, described and figured in the contributions to 

 the Flora of Mentone by J. T. Moggridge (1864), and more 

 especially by the perusal of the work of Mr Darwin, on the fecun- 

 dation of orchids (1866), which has restored the old and half- 

 forgotten work of Sprengel to its proper place in the minds of 

 botanists. 



In that work intitled, " Das entdeckte Geheimness der Natur 

 im Bau und in der Befrucktung der Blumen," (Berlin, 1793,) 

 Sprengel, by means of a great accumulation of acute observations, 

 had demonstrated the generality of the laws, which he called dicho- 

 gamia ; according to which the pollen of the flowers of a plant 

 ought to go by preference to fecundate the ovaries of the flower of 

 another plant (of the same species.) In dioecious plants the thing 

 is manifest of itself; in monoecious plants it is also easily com- 

 prehended ; but in plants with hermaphrodite flowers, it seems at 

 ■first sight an absurdity, considering the vicinity of the stamens to 

 the pistil. But the attentive observation of facts shews that it is 

 not quite so absurd. A phenomenon that is met with in almost 

 all plants, is that the maturity of the anthers is not always con- 

 temporaneous with the maturity of the pistil. In some it is the 

 anthers which reach maturity before the pistil; in others it is the 

 pistil which, on the contrary, becomes mature before the anthers, 

 as may be seen in a few plants (Graminaceas, Cyperaceae, Luzulse, 



• Sugli apparecchi della Fecondazione nelle piante antocarpe (fanerogame). 

 Sommario de Osservazioni fatti negli anni 1865-66, da Federigo Delpino. 

 Firenze. 1867. 



