Scientijic Societies. 27 



hand. Botany, for instance, may seem a delightful science, a 

 science which even ladies may pursue ; yet by what method have 

 its laws been discovered ? Take a matter, now so simple and so 

 thoroughly understood, as the fructification of plants. We know 

 now that every flowering jilant produces inside its petals a whorl 

 of modified leaves called stamens, which bear at their summit little 

 recei)tacles full of dust named pollen ; and also that each plant 

 produces, either on the same or on another individual of the 

 species, another set of modified leaves called the pistil, of which 

 the interior contains seeds, and which bear at its summit a viscid 

 aperture called the stigma. We know further, that unless the 

 pollen out of the anthers of the stamen in some way or other finds 

 its access to the seeds of the pistil, the plant cannot be fertilized 

 or bear fruit ; yet consider by what laborious methods this residt 

 has been obtained. In the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, was a 

 pistachio which bore only flowers with pistils, and which therefore 

 never produced fruit. One year, Bernard de Jussieu, in going his 

 rounds, observed suddenly to his amazement that the tree was 

 forming nuts. Where in the world could the pollen have come 

 from to fertilize the pistils of its flowers? There was no pistachio 

 with pollen-producing flowers either in that or any neighbouring 

 garden. Was then the whole theory of the fertilization of plants to 

 be upset? Might a flower, with pistils only, untouched by pollen, 

 produce fruit.? De Jussieu still maintained that it could not, but 

 he was no longer able to prove it; and vexed at his inability to 

 account for the fact, he appealed to authority for assistance. The 

 police were set on the scent of the stamen-bearing pistachio. 

 Constantly enlarging their circle, and examining the neighbour- 

 hood with infinite care, garden by garden, and yard by yard, they 

 at last discovered, near the Luxembourg, in an obscure corner of 

 a distant nursery-garden a little pistachio with male or stamen- 

 bearing floweis, which, being but a small and young tree, had 

 blossomed that year for the very first time since it had been 

 planted. 



So far so good ; but next how had the minute and almost 

 invisible pollen-dust traversed, in the smok}' air of Paris, the 

 P'aubourg Saint Germain, the Faubourg Saint Jacques, and the 

 Faubourg Saint Marceau to light by accident on the tiny spot of 

 the pistils of the flowers of that single tree in the Jardin des 

 Plantes .? Who could believe that the wild winds performed their 

 work with such accurate discrimination, as to dispose, with such 

 infinite nicety, a few out of the myriad motes they bore with them 

 in their course r It was, indeed, all very well to say that 

 insects had carried the pollen ; but who was to know that this 

 view was correct, or was anything more than an idle guess? 



