14 MEYEN ON VEGETABLE IMPREGNATION 
It was my intention in this little work only to bring for- 
ward facts, and to point to their results in such a manner that 
it might be perceived that we are not compelled to advance 
any new view on the functions of the sexual organs in plants, 
but that those prevailing are correct. For this reason I will 
here merely give some other indications, which will likewise, 
more or less decidedly, oblige us to adhere to our old views. 
According to the new theory, each pollen-grain would be the 
germ of a new individual; but we likewise know at present 
that it is the pollen-tube, at least in most cases, from whose 
action the production of the embryo results; and we have 
also since come to know how various the number of aper- 
tures is through which the pollen-grains can discharge the 
fovilla, and that out of one and the same pollen-grain as many 
pollen-tubes may be formed as there are apertures. Nay, we 
even know that the pollen-tubes may themselves be ramified, 
and that even from one and the same pollen-grain several 
pollen-tubes may penetrate into the canal of the style; there 
is therefore nothing opposed to our concluding, that not only 
each pollen-tube of a pollen-grain, but that even each branch 
of a pollen-tube which finds its way to the ovule, is capable of 
causing the production of an embryo; and it follows, there- 
fore, that the number of germs common to a pollen-grain must 
be quite undetermined ; for in the first place this depends on 
the number of tubes which are formed, and secondly, on their 
perfectly accidental ramification. But of these distinct germs, 
which consequently must frequently be present in great number 
in one and the same pollen-grain, there is nothing to be seen; 
the fovilla which penetrates into the pollen-tube exhibits, as is 
well known, no trace of separate germs for the young embryos ; 
and it is even dissolved, at the apex of the pollen-tube with 
which the impregnation is effected, into a homogeneous sub- 
stance ; so that no room exists even for imagining that the sper- 
matozoa or spermatic corpuscles can represent the germs. 
Mr. Robert Brown concludes, from the gradual disappear- 
ance of the fovilla in the pollen-tube, that it is employed in 
nourishing and forming the pollen-tube. Highly probable as 
this supposition is, yet it cannot thence be concluded that the 
fovilla exists merely for the nutrition and formation of the 
pollen-tube. We observe in many cases so very distinctly that 
the pollen-tube first occurs in great vigour, 7. e. with a thicker 
