174 Dr. A. Giinther on the European 



Treviranus, in a treatise recently published *, inclines to answer 

 the last question in the affirmative, but he says that he cannot give 

 any positive proof. I am therefore the more pleased to have made 

 the foregoing observations, which seem to give such a proof in an 

 incontestable manner. The pollen applied to the stigma of an 

 ovarium containing no ovules, making this ovarium swell, proves 

 that the pollen may act on the ovarium independently of the 

 ovules ; and if this is the case in Orchids, why should it not be 

 the same in all other phanerogamous plants ? If we admit that 

 the ovules are enclosed more or less in a dark cavity, that of the 

 ovarium, and therefore have not the power of preparing the nu- 

 tritive substances themselves, but must receive them from the 

 exterior green parts of the ovarium, we can easily imagine how 

 the pollen, besides the direct action of its tubes on the formation 

 of the embryo within the ovules, effects in the same direct manner 

 the enlargement of the ovarium. We even see that, in Orchids, 

 this last-mentioned action on the ovarium is primary — that not 

 until this action has taken place do the ovules attain perfection 

 and become suited for the other, embryo-forming power of the 

 pollen-tubes. If the first power has not acted, the second 

 cannot act. Whether the same may be the case in all other 

 phanerogamous plants^ we must leave to further but rather 

 difficult observations. 



Finally, it may be repeated that, at least in Orchids, if not in 

 all plants, the pollen acts in two different ways : it effects the 

 enlargement of the ovarium, and impregnates the ovules. 



I 'close these short notices with the very just remarks of 

 Robert Brown which are to be found at the end of his treatise 

 on the fecundation of Orchidese and Asclepiadese : — " I even ven- 

 ture to add that, in investigating the obscure subject of genera- 

 tion, additional light is perhaps more likely to be derived from 

 a further minute and patient examination of the structure and 

 action of the sexual organs in Asclepiadese and Orchidese than 

 from that of any other department either of the vegetable or 

 animal kingdom." 



XVI. — On the European Species of the Genus Labrax. 

 By Dr. A. Gunther. 



M. Barboza du Bocage, Director of the Museum at Lisbon, 

 has directed my attention to a remarkable difference in the 

 dentition of the vomer, by which he was enabled to distinguish 

 two foi'ms of Labrax inhabiting the sea at Lisbon, viz. the 

 true Labrax Lupus and a second, spotted species. Fortunately 



* Vcrliaadl. d. naturliist. Ver. fiir Rheiulaud u. Westph. 1862, p. 299. 



