582 French. NatioJial Institute. 



elides more or less long, terminated by capsules or urns of 

 a very compHcaled organization, and filled with a dust of 

 various colours. 



Dillenius and Linnteus thought these capsules were an- 

 therije or organs of the male sex, and ihcy songht for those 

 of the female sex in certain groups of leaves in the form of 

 rosettes or stars, vvhich we remark upon other parts of some 

 of these sn)all plants. 



Their opinion however was never very prevalent ; it was 

 thought, on the contrary, that the dust which filled the urns 

 was the seed, and not the pollen. 



It then became necessary to inquire into the analogy of 

 the stamina. Hill thought he saw it in the ciHce on the 

 edge of the urn ; Kcehlreuler, in the hood ; Schreber, in 

 certain small threads at ihebottomof the pedicle; and others 

 were of the same opinion also. 



But in 1 774 a physician ebtabllshed at Chemnitz, John 

 Hedwig, a name subsequently very celebrated, observing in 

 the rosettes of some mosses some cylindrical bodies, which 

 had been discovered a long time before by Micheli, perceived 

 that they were open at the end, and that they emitted a pow- 

 der of excessive tenuity : he did not doubt therefore that 

 these were antherae. Having afterwards sown the grosser 

 dust which fills the urns, he saw moss spring up, and con- 

 cluded that this dust was the grain, as several others had 

 supposed before his time, and consequently that the urn was 

 the fruit, or the female organ fecundated. 



These observations were first published in an abridged 

 form in 1777; — they were crowned by the academy of St. 

 Petersburgh in 1781, and followed up for more than thirty 

 years with most astonishing patience, and elucidated by co- 

 pious works and by a great many designs made by the mi- 

 croscope ; and ihey have obtained the approbation of almost 

 all the botanists of Europe, particularly of those who make 

 the mosses a particular object of study : the only objection, 

 advanced very s'mngly at^ first, viz. that no rosettes were 

 found in certain genera of mosses, has been nearly destroyed, 

 since Hcdwig, by dint of study, has succeeded in showing 

 that the antherae in these cases are in the buds of the axillae 



of 



