FIRST STEPS IN MICROSCOPIC MOTION PHOTOGRAPHY 97 



olulu, where I worked on the subtropical flowers. 



I made a practice of studying the pollen of every 

 flower I worked on and the Spider Lily (Hymeno- 

 callis) pollen, I found, had a visible nucleus, one I 

 could picture. That was the first time I, or anyone 

 else, had seen the nucleus of pollen in life. The thrill 

 of a lifetime! It was quite large, crescent shaped, and 

 reddish in color and became visible in about twenty 

 minutes after the grain was put in a drop of sweet- 

 ened water. The camera pictured it swimming 

 around and around inside the grain and going down 

 the tube as it germinated. 



Another wonderful thing about the pollen was 

 that if I should cut a very tiny shaving off of the end 

 of the stigma, put it on one side of a drop of sweet- 

 ened water, sprinkle pollen grains around it, those 

 nearest the stigma, in what might be called the zone 

 of attraction, germinated first, while the pollen 

 grains just a little farther away, outside of this radius 

 would not start germinating for perhaps a half hour 

 later. The tubes as they grew from the grains crossed 

 the field and entered the stigma. No matter what the 

 obstruction, they grew over or under it or pushed it 

 to one side. Then to watch for the first time it had 

 been seen in active life, the nucleus, the germ of life, 

 as it came out of the grain, traveled down the tube 

 and entered the stigma. To ponder the reason, the 



