224 Proceedings of Philasophical Societies. [Surr. 
to say, the part of the fruit to whieh the grains adhere, is simple, 
and placed in the middle of the fruit, like a column or an axis. 
When the summit of this column is free, the way by which the 
influence of the pollen is transmitted from the pistil to the seeds, 
appears to be very complicated, and to be by means of vessels which 
run along the fruit itself to penetrate the placenta at its base, and 
go to the seeds side by side of the nourishing vessels. Such, in 
fact, is the direction of these vessels in the amurantacew, according 
to M. de St. Hilaire. But this observer has remarked that in most 
plants of the category which he studies, and particularly in the 
primulacee, the portulacee, the caryophyllee, fecundation takes 
place in a more direct way. For this purpose there exists at first 
very fine vessels, proceeding from the base of the style to the 
summit of the placenta. These filaments are destroyed after fecun- 
dation, and then only the summit of the placenta becomes free. 
M. de St. Hilaire conceives also that there always exists a point 
or a pore different from the umbilicus, by which the fecundating 
vessels arrive at the grain, and to which M. Turpin, as we have 
mentioned in one of our preceding reports, has given the name of 
micropile. 
The part of M. de St. Hilaire’s memoir which is purely botanical 
presents many detailed observations (unfortunately scarcely suscept- 
ible of analysis) on the particular characters of certain plants of the 
families that he examined, some of which, in his opinion, ought to 
serve as types for new genera, and others ought to pass into families 
different from those in which incomplete observations have hitherto. 
placed them. 
The pisang plantain, or fig-tree of Adam, is an herbaceous plant 
of the height of a tree, very remarkable for the enormous size of 
its leaves, and celebrated for the utility of its fruits, which furnishes 
to the inhabitants of the torrid zone one of the principal articles of 
their food. The cultivation of it has multiplied the varieties to such 
a degree, that there are probably as many sorts as we possess of 
apples or pears; and it is equally difficult to distinguish among 
them the primitive species. Accordingly botanists differ very much 
in their enumeration of the species, and in the characters which they 
assign to them. 
M. Desvaux, who has collected all that observers say of the dif- 
ferent plantains, of the difference of their fruits and of their uses, 
thinks that there are 44 varieties in the common species, or musa 
paradisiaca of Linnus; and three distinct species of this plant, 
namely, the musa sapientum, Lin. the mzsa occinea, pretty common 
at present in our green-houses, and the evsete, described by Bruce ° 
in his Journey to the Sources of the Nile. 
The fig is a tree, the fruit of which has undergone still greater 
modifications by culture than the plantain. M. le Marquis de 
Suffren, who lives in Provence, a country anciently celebrated for 
the goodness of its figs, perceiving that the cultivators and pro- 
prietors. are far from knowing all the good varieties, which are suits 
4 
