STAMENS AND PISTILS. 245 



can be no doubt that, in a wild state, some or other 

 of the two kinds of blossoms are ripe together, through- 

 out the flowering season, on different trees. 



A similar experiment to that just "mentioned was 

 made in 1749 upon a Palm-tree at Berlin, which for 

 want of pollen had never brought any fruit to perfec- 

 tion. A branch of barren flowers was sent by the 

 post from Leipsic, twenty German miles distant, and 

 suspended over the pistils. Consequently abundance 

 of fruit was ripened, and many young plants raised 

 from the seeds*. 



Tournefort and Pontedera supposed the pollen to 

 be of an excrementitious nature, and thrown off as 

 superfluous. But its being so curiously and distinctly 

 organized in every plant, and producing a peculiar 

 vapour on the accession of moisture, shows, beyond 

 contradiction, that it has functions to perform after it 

 has left the anther. The same writers conceived that 

 the stamens might possibly secrete something to cir- 

 culate from them to the young seeds ; an hypothesis 



* What species of Palm was the subject of this experiment does 

 not clearly appear. In the original communication to Dr. Watson, 

 printed in the preface of Lee's Introduction to Botany, it is called 

 Ptilma major foliis jlabelliformibus, which seems appropriate to RJiapis 

 jiabelliformis, Ait. Hort. Keic. v. 3. 473; yet Linnaus, in his Dis- 

 sertation on this subject, expressly calls it P/IKHLV daetylifera, the 

 Date Palm, and says he had in his garden many rigorous plants 

 raised from a portion of the seeds above mentioned. The great suc- 

 cess of the experiment, and the " fan-shaped" leaves, make me rather 

 take it for the Rhapis, a plant not well known to Linnaeus. 



