Meyen’s Report for 1839 on Physiological Botany. 429 
tube for the end of the pollen-tube which had penetrated into 
the nucleus. 
The raceme of small cells which crowns the primordial 
tube at the upper end has been overlooked by Schleiden, and 
MM. Mirbel and Spach state them to be abortive primordial 
tubes. 
The results of the observations are too evident to require 
any very full explanation. According to them, the fertiliza- 
tion of Zea Mays takes place neither according to the new 
nor the old theory : the observations are quite unfavourable to 
the new view ; for the tube which produces, or is changed into 
the embryo, does not come into the nucleus from without, but 
is formed in it and at a distance from the pollen. How the fer- 
tilization takes place, MM. Mirbel and Spach show they are 
quite ignorant. The observations of these gentlemen were so 
very different from my own former ones, that I was obliged to 
convince myself of their correctness*. I examined the female 
flowers of the Zea Mays, and not only found the above disco- 
veries perfectly correct, but was fortunate enough to be able 
to add some new observations. I saw that the extremity of 
the primitive tube was always closed and never in communi- 
cation with the pollen-tube; the primitive tube becomes 
embryo, and out of the ovoid cells at the lower (chalaza) end 
is produced the scutellum, which grows more or less over 
the whole embryo in the form of a folding leaf; out of the 
small lower cleft of this scutellum there hangs the radicular 
end of the embryo, and exhibits the half lifeless string of 
cells which formed the supporter at the end of the primitive 
tube. I have often succeeded in extricating the little embryo 
from the imperfectly formed scutellum. 
Afterwards M. Mirbelt acknowledged that his discovery of 
the primitive tube, out of which the embryo was formed, was 
erroneous; he convinced himself that this utriculus is the 
true embryo-sac in which the embryo and the albuminous 
body are formed ; and according to this also the error into 
which I have fallen must be corrected ; it was caused by my 
trusting more to these observations than to my own, which 
had been made previously. 
[To be continued. } 
* Meyen, Noch einige Worte uber den Befruchtungsakt und die Polyem- 
bryonie bei den héheren Pflanzen. 2 Steintafeln. Quarto. Berlin, 1840. 
p- 21. 
+ Rectification d’une erreur commise dans les ‘ Notes pour servir a 
V’Histoire de l’Embryogénie Végétale.”—Annales des Sci. Nat., Avril, 1839. 
Part. Bot. i. p. 381. 
