SECT. IV. OBJECTIONS. 345 



the fruit, and the cones and stars being presumed to 

 be the male organs. 



The legitimacy of this conclusion seems now to 

 be almost universally admitted ; and yet it has been 

 lately suspected that the Mosses are hermaphrodites, 

 containing in the urn both the germe and pollen. 

 Such at least is the opinion of M. Palisot Beauvois, a 

 French botanist of some considerable celebrity ;* 

 who regards the column as constituting an individual 

 viscus, and containing a sort of granular and powdery 

 substance as well as the urn the powder of the 

 latter, according to M. Beauvois, being the pollen ; 

 and that of the former being the seed. This 

 opinion is certainly plausible, and may perhaps prove 

 to be the truth. In the month of November, 1805, 

 I examined some capsules of Bryum argenteum 

 before the operculum had fallen, but not till it had 

 become a little brownish with age, and found that 

 the column actually contained within it a quantity 

 of fine granules imbedded in a pulpy and viscid 

 substance ; the granules of the capsule being in 

 nearly the same state at the same time. The granules 

 of the column were easily distinguished from those 

 of the capsule both in size and colour, the former 

 being by much the smallest and almost perfectly 

 transparent ; and the latter being comparatively 

 large, as well as opaque and green. 



Such are the two sets of granules on which M. 

 Beauvois founds his opinion of the sexual organs 

 * Prodrome cks Mousses et des Lycopodes, 



