216 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 
The inference is fairly ridiculous that in these days of keen investigation 
botanists would accept upon faith one of the most fundamental statements of . 
their science, and that too, when vastly improved instruments and methods 
have rendered its testing a matter of comparative ease. The fact that it is not 
such a very recondite thing is shown by the statement already made that its 
demonstration is a very ordinary operation of the botanical laboratories of 
to-day, and the path broken by Amici in the early part of this century has 
often been traveled since. We do not pretend to say that everything has been 
discovered with reference to this process of fertilization. Very far from it, for 
many things yet remain to be told. But when a worker begins by saying that 
pollen-tubes are not found even in the cavity of the ovary, much less connected 
with the ovules, we must shake our heads, for too many of us have seen them in 
“both places. And then what will bétanists think of the statement that “ com- 
paratively few of the botanists ever use a compound microscope, and of those 
wh o not many are aware of the amount of labor involved in a thorough 
_ microscopical investigation by means of thin sections!” Now, we do not won- | 
er at the rest of the editorial, for such lack of information concerning the bo- — 
through the styles of certain plants. This, however, does not preve that t 
process of fertilization is universal.” We should say not. 
a d i =f nr 
a dried pod, out of which all the seeds have rattled, is a grand mistake, for wea 
Ayiet or y brought together for the work of the monogtaP® ” 
pada ayn > - Plea for the study of systematic botany as opposed to me : 
and physiological, as the writer’s own laboratory will abundantly 
