302 



GYNO-DKECIOUS PLANTS. 



CHAP. VII. 



tected. Eighteen seedlings were raised from purchased 

 seed, sown in the same small bed; and these consisted 

 of seven hermaphrodites and eleven females. They 

 were left freely exposed to the visits of bees, and no 



Fig. 15. 



Hermaphrodite. Females. 



THYMCS VULGAKIS (magnified). 



doubt every female flower was fertilised; for on plac- 

 ing under the microscope* a large number of stigmas 

 from female plants, not one could be found to which 

 pollen-grains of thyme did not adhere. The seeds 

 were carefully collected from the eleven female plants, 

 and they weighed 98.7 grains; and those from the 

 seven hermaphrodites 36.5 grains. This gives for an 

 equal number of plants the ratio of 100 to 58; 

 and we here see, as in the last case, how much more 

 fertile the females are than the hermaphrodites. These 

 two lots of seeds were sown separately in two ad- 

 joining beds, and the seedlings from both the her- 

 maphrodite and female parent-plants consisted of both 

 forms. 



Satureia Jiortcnsis. Eleven seedlings were raised in 

 separate pots in a hotbed and afterwards kept in the 

 green-house. They consisted of ten females and of a 

 single hermaphrodite. Whether or not the conditions 

 to which they had been subjected caused the great ex- 



