SECT. IV* OBJECTIONS. 331 



may yet be wafted to it by means of the wind, 

 which curious phenomenon may sometimes be dis- 

 tinctly seen. On the 14th of June 1808, as I was 

 accidently looking at a field of Rye-grass situated 

 to the south of the spot on which I then stood, the 

 atmosphere being clear, and the wind blowing gently 

 from the west, I was surprized to observe a thin and 

 sudden cloud, as if of smoke or fine dust, sweeping 

 briskly along the surface of the Grass, and gradually . 

 disappearing. This cloud was soon followed by a 

 second from a different quarter of the field, and that 

 by a third, and so on in succession for several 

 minutes. It was a general discharge of pollen from 

 thousands of anthers bursting at the same moment, so 

 that no stigma ready to receive the pollen could possi- 

 bly fail of being supplied, either from the anthers pro- 

 per to the flower of which it formed a part, or from 

 those of some other flower discharging their con- 

 tents into the general mass. The distance to which 

 the pollen may be conveyed, on a short exposure to 

 the action of a fine atmosphere, is not likely to do 

 it any damage. Linnseus kept some of the pollen 

 of the Jatropha urens in paper for more than a 

 month, which even then fertilized the pistils it was 

 shook over. 



The foregoing doubts or objections were enter- Insisted on 

 tained by the scrupulous or sceptical prior to the 

 elucidations of Linnaeus ; and indeed they arose al- 

 most naturally out of the darkness in which the 

 subject was then involved. But as the elucidations 



