AND ON POLYEMBRYONY IN THE HIGHER PLANTS. 13 
above-mentioned plants, I must confirm them ; and I am at the 
same time so fortunate as to be able to add to them something 
new. I too have never been able to observe a connexion of the 
primordial utricle with the pollen-tube ; I moreover found the 
apex of the primordial utricle, when it had been extricated and 
prepared without injury, always perfectly closed. The primor- 
dial utricle is converted into the embryo, and the cyme of ovate 
cellules which originates at the other extremity of the primitive 
utricle, increases more and more, and becomes the scutellum. I 
did, it is true, state formerly, trusting to the statements of MM. 
Horkel and Schleiden, that the scutellum of Grasses was the 
albuminous body which is situated immediately next the em- 
bryo; but I have now clearly observed that this albuminous 
body takes its commencement from the inferior end of the pri- 
mordial utricle, grows in the form of a leaf contracting on 
both sides over the entire embryo, and forms the scutellum ; 
out of the small inferior fissure of the scutellum the radicular 
end still projects for some time, and shows the half-withered 
but very large funiculus. I have, at least, not been able to de- 
tect in Mais and Sorghum any separate embryo-sac, inclosing 
the embryo and its albuminous body; yet I have observed not 
very rarely in the former plant considerably large pieces of 
an exceedingly delicate and slightly firm membrane, which 
clothed the cavity of the nucleus more towards the micropyle 
end; usually, however, this wall is merely clothed with a ho- 
mogeneous mucus. How impregnation takes place in Mais, and 
in similar Grasses, has remained to me quite as unknown as to 
my predecessors; and the observation of this act will probably 
long remain undisclosed to us, from the peculiar structure of 
the ovarium; yet so much may here be adopted as certain, that 
it is not the pollen-tube which is in this case transformed into 
the embryo; for the tube or bag out of which the embryo is 
formed appears long before the action of the pollen can take 
place. MM. de Mirbel and Spach have enumerated several other 
Grasses where the formation of the embryo is said to be quite 
similar ; and whether it is not of a similar kind in other plants, 
is as yet unknown. 
It results, therefore, from these observations on the formation 
of the embryo in Mais (although these are still imperfect, from 
the act of impregnation remaining unknown), that the new 
views on the sexes of plants cannot be the correct ones. 
