I 



406 On Parthenogenesis. 



between tliem. It will proLaWy ere long be convenient to apply some 

 distinguishing name to those egg-like ovarium products which do not re- 

 quire impregnation as a necessary antecedent to. development, but for the 

 present, at any rate in the Daphnice^ we must call them eggs, which they 

 more nearly resemble than ordinary gemmse. 



" Prof. Huxley might be supposed to agree with the naturalists as to 

 the essential difference between eggs and buds above-mentioned, since he 

 has proposed, developing the idea of which we owe the germ to Dr. Car- 

 penter, to extend the use of the word 'individual' to the whole product of 

 one impregnation, and to designate as 'zooids' the independent forms of 

 the individual,* Prof. Huxley, however, proposes this system of nomen- 

 clature merely as convenient, and not as expressing any fundamental, 

 structural, or potential difference between eggs and buds." 



The investigations are still going on, and the subject is re- 

 ceiving thorough study. A paper on the topic was presented 

 to the recent meeting of the American Association by Berthold 

 Seemann which has not yet been published. We quote a single 

 aragraph respecting Parthenogenesis in Plants from a paper 



y Dr. L. Radlkofer of Munich, published in the Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History, for September (xx, 204), relating 

 particularly to the Ccdebogyne ilicifolia^ which plant was first 



observed to be an example of parthenogenesis by J. Smith. 

 (Linn. Trans.^ xviii, 509.) 



" In the first rank here must be mentioned the observations on Cceleho- 

 gyne ilicifolia^ a dioecious Euphorbiaceous plant, native of Australia, fe- 

 male specimens of which were long since introduced into England, and 

 were widely distributed from there, before the male plant had been de- 

 tected by travellers in its native country. No living specimens of the 

 male plant have yet reached Europe ; only a dried shoot with male flow- 

 ers exists in the Herbarium at Kevv. A glance at this suffices to show, 

 from the composition of the inflorescence of the plants, the impossibility 

 of the occurrence of a hermaphrodite flower in Coelebogyne^ and to show, 

 further, that if the exceptional case which has been observed in other "| 



plants, of a production of male flowers on female specimens of dioecious 

 plants, occurred in Ccdebogyne also, it could not be overlooked. Finally, 

 all botanists who have had an opportunity of examining the female plants 

 of Ccelebogyne^ and among these are numerous authorities, agree in de- 

 claring that no male organs occur on them. In spite, however, of the 

 fact that the exclusion of the fertilizing pollen of the same species must 

 here certainly be most perfect, the plants cultivated at Kew annually 

 ripen an abundance of seeds, from which even the third or fourth gene- 

 ration of {female) plants have been raised there." 



The correctness of the conclusion Avas sbown fartber by an 

 actual microscopic examination of the stigmas. The same paper 

 gives details tending to sustain the conclusion that partheno- 

 genesis occurs in the common Hemp {Cannabis sativa). 



* Ann. and Mag. of Nat, Hist 1862, 



