200 ON THE CAPHIFICATION OF THE FIG. 



sary to generate the embryo of the fig, though it was not con- 

 clusive as to impregnation not being requisite. For it might 

 have happened that some organ or other under some strange 

 form might contain the pollen, and be found on or amongst the 

 female flowers. With this view I examined with the microscope, 

 with all the care in my power, all the internal parts of the fig 

 in every stage from its first appearance to the attaining its full 

 size — the scales under the mouth, the pedicels, the bracts, the 

 perigone, the pistil from the base to the summit — and I never 

 succeeded in discovering anything which contained pollen, or 

 any other analogous substance which might be even suspected 

 of producing impregnation. Only it must be observed that on 

 the style, from its young state till shortly after the changes that 

 take place in the .ovulum, or about that time, there appear 

 certain obscure grains which at first sight have some resemblance 

 to those of pollen. On attentive examination they proved to be 

 little glands, with the appearance of wrinkled grains, composed 

 of cellular tissue ; and as they first appear so they remain. The 

 same grains appear also in the caprifig and in exotic figs. 

 Besides, it appears that the style has not the tissue for conducting 

 the pollen, unless you would give that name to the internal part 

 of the style, formed of longer and more slender cells than those 

 of the exterior, as may be so frequently observed in lengthened 

 slender organs of numerous dicotyledonous plants. Thus every 

 attempt on my part to discover any need of the fecundating 

 substance of stamens to produce the embryo has failed. And, if 

 I am not mistaken, this is not an isolated fact in the science, 

 Mr. J. Smith having ( Transactions of the Linnean Society, 

 1840) already announced that the female of a dioecious plant, 

 indigenous to New Holland, of the family of Euphorbiacese, 

 called by him Coelebogyne, bears in London * fertile seeds with- 

 out a mile flower having ever been discovered on it, and without 

 any suspicion that it could have been impregnated by the pollen 

 of any allied plant ; and whoever, in answer to what I have 

 stated of the fig, should allege the assertion of Linnaeus, that 

 this tree only produces good fruit where the caprifig grows, 

 must recollect wliat I have said respecting it, that differences in 

 climate and season more or less hot cause more or less of the 

 seeds to remain empty, and that on that account, in the northern 

 parts of Europe and in stoves, the seeds would probably always 

 remain sterile. So it is with our Vernino fig, as to the fruits 

 wdiich it ripens in the open air in November or December, and 

 with that treble-bearing' La Cava fig-, which will sometimes 



At Kew Gardens. 



