207 
similar direction, may have already or should hereafter pub 
lish. I speak thus, for I have myself, in a degree, had to 
encounter much of this very unfairness, and I shall hereafter 
claim an immunity from it when I publish, as it is my in- 
tention to do, some experiments and deductions of my own, 
tending as I hope, to assist in elucidating this interesting and 
important subject. In the mean time and even aside from 
this connection, I desire to call attention to the value of the 
observations I have been so fortunate as to make and which 
I now, for the first time, put into print. 
It is my intention to make this communication as brief as 
possible, the more particularly as, although the observations 
described appear at first sight to be tolerably complete, yet, 
for my own part, I must consider them as but partial and 
fragmentary and merely as memoranda of a phase in the 
hitherto insufficiently studied life-history of a group of plants 
a more thorough knowledge of which is of the utmost im- 
portance and interest. Therefore I thus set down what I 
have myself seen, intending to follow it up with more ex- 
tended researches as opportunity offers. At the outset I 
would remark that the investigation of such phenomena 
as I now mention require no more special apparatus than a 
tolerably good microscope furnished with a magnifying 
power of about four hundred diameters and which is usually 
and conveniently obtained by employing a one-quarter or 
one-fifth of an inch objective on the usual ten-inch length of 
tube or body and a B or No. 2 Ocular. But what is cer- 
tainly required is a large share of patience and perseverance, 
as is, perhaps, exemplified by the fact that while studing this 
subject, as I‘have mentioned, at one time I remained at the 
microscope, only at long intervals removing my eye from it, 
for the greater part of three consecutive days. That is to say 
certain points were observed about the middle of one day 
and all the rest of that day and evening, the whole of the 
next day and evening and nearly all of the succeeding day 
were spent in these investigations watching the changes and 
transformations I am about to describe. And this was only 
at one time, for many hours thereafter were spent in the same 
