Dr. L. Radlkofcr on Fecundation in the Vegetable Kingdom. ^SO 



creek under St. Mawes. The second fishery he mentions took 

 its rise from the quantity of what he calls grampuses and blowers 

 that frequented the coast in the pilchard season ; but, owing to 

 mismanagement or some other cause, the concern did not prosper. 

 These grampuses would not have been recognized by naturalists 

 as the species now known uy that name, for they seem always to 

 have been rare, and usually solitary in their habits ; but they were 

 probably the more common Dolphin. The numbers taken at 

 times at a remote date would seem to show that the ecclesiastical 

 right of the Bishop of Exeter, as mentioned by Anstis, was not 

 unworthy of attention ; but it is to be presumed that the mer- 

 chants of Bayoune were too much alive to their own interests to 

 bring the produce of their fishery within the reach of the bishop's 

 officers, or that of the clerical incumbent of the parish, who 

 made claim to tithe from fish thus caught. Buchanan says, as 

 quoted by Sibbald, that on one occasion — of course, in Scotland 

 — twenty-seven whales were taken as tithes from the number 

 that were caught. 



XLIV. — The Process of Fecundation in the Vegetable Kingdom, 

 a)id its relation to that in the Animal Kingdom. By Dr. L. 

 Radlkofer. 



[Concluded from p. 365.] 



Sect. II. The Process of Fecundation. 



Our insight into the events occurring in fecundation, into the 

 essential nature of the process of fecundation, has been importantly 

 advanced of late, in the department of zoology in particular, by 

 direct observation of the behaviour of the spermatozoids in regard 

 to the ovum. Although Keber's* account of the penetration of 

 the spermatozoids into the micropyle of the ovum of the Naiadae 

 has been shown by Von Hessling'sf researches to be fallacious, 

 yet the fact, that the spermatozoids reach not merely the outer 

 surface of the membrane of the ovum, but, penetrating this, come 

 into direct contact with the vitellus itself, has been completely 

 demonstrated by the observations of other inquirers. 



This was the case first with Barry in the ovum of the Rabbit J. 



* F. Keber, Leber den Eintritt der Samenzellen in das Ei. Insterburg, 

 1853. 



Ibid. Mikrosk. Unters. iib. Porositat der Korper, nebst ein Abhandl. iib. 

 d. Eintritt der Samenzellen in das Ei. Konigsberg, 1854. 



t Zeitschr. fiir wiss. Zoologie, Von Siebold und Kolliker, Bd. v. Heft ir. 

 p. 392 et seq. 



X Martin Barry, Spermatozoa within the Mammif. Oviun. Phil. Trans. 

 Loudon, vol. 133. p. 33, 1843. 



