PEOCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. ^21 



^roceeDing^ of ^otictic^. 



Botanical Society of Edinbuegh, Feh. llth. — Prof. Alexander 



Dickson in the chair. — The following communications were read : 



*' On the Fertilisation of the Cereals." By Alex. IS. Wilson."^' This 

 was in continuation of previous - papers on the same subject. The 

 author had investigated Triticiim polonicum. Troin the structure of 

 the pales of this pJant all the pollen must be discharged inside and 

 <;ross- fertilisation can be very rarely possible. By enclosing growing 

 ears near the period of flowering, in corked bottles (a notch being 

 left for the culm) it was shown that fertilisation and ripening occurred 

 as well as in the open air. Further reasons for considering cereals 

 fielf-fertilising were adduced, and the paper concludes with the 

 following remarks on the subject generally : " Certain botanists have 

 assumed the responsibility of maintaining that iS^ature abhors self- 

 fertilisation. If she does, her practice falls short of her principles. 

 But what is self -fertilisation ? and what is cross-fertilisation? Con- 

 sider a wheat plant. The seed falls into a poor soil, and only a 

 single stem and a single spike are produced. The pollen and the ovule 

 enclosed in each floret have a certain relationship to each other ; 

 what that relationship is, in terms of the production of a new plant, 

 we do not know. But is this relationship between the pollen in one 

 floret and the ovule in another floret of the same spike a diff'erent 

 relationship from that between the pollen and ovule in the same 

 floret ? Suppose, again, that the seed falls into a rich soil, and pro- 

 duces 50 stems and 50 spikes ; is the relationship between the pollen 

 on one spike and the ovules on another different from the relationship 

 between the pollen and ovule in any single floret ? Suppose, further, 

 that a wheat plant of 50 tillers is torn asunder when young, divided 

 into 10 plants and grown in 10 different fields. Is the relationship 

 between the pollen of one plant and ovules of another different 

 from the relationship between the pollen and ovule of a single 

 floret in the supposed single stem ? If what is usually called cross- 

 fertilisation — the conjunction of pollen from one floret with the ovule 

 of another — brings] different elements together from those brought 

 together by self-fertilisation, this is a physiological difference of real 

 value. But if in ** cross" fertilisation the pollen transferred con- 

 tains nothing but what is contained in the home pollen, then cross- 

 fertilisation and self- fertilisation, dealing with the same elements, are 

 physiologically identical. To call the process self-fertilisation when 

 the pollen comes half-an-inch to the stigma, and cross-fertilisation 

 when it comes half-a-dozen yards, seems to be the making of a distinc- 

 tion in advance of any real knowledge. If a botanist, by using the 



Printed in full in "Gardeners' Chronicle " for Feb. 20th. 



