30S On Parthenogenesis of 



plausible excuse for disbelieving so astounding a fact. How easy 

 for polygamous flowers to be hidden among the female ones ! (as 

 Mr. Masters has shown them to exist occasionally in the dioicious 

 hop-plant) ! How easy for pollen to be wafted to the stigmas ! 

 These and others were the objections of the unbelievers in the 

 new discovery. To this must be added that the experiments of 

 Koelreuter on hybrids, placed the sexuality of plants on a firmer 

 footing than it formerly enjoyed, and that the concession that a 

 dioicious plant could, under certain circumstances, develope its 

 ovula without the aid of pollen, was looked upon as an absolute 

 negation of sexuality. 



The polemic on this subject was continued for many a year, 

 but for the want of new observations began also to slacken, when 

 on the 18th of June, 1839, Mr. John Smith, Curator of the Royal 

 Botanic Gardens at Kew, announced before the Linnean Society of 

 London that there existed in the Royal Gardens a female specimen 

 of a Euphorbiaceous plant, Cselebogyne ilicifolia, J. Smith, from 

 New Holland, which annually produced ripe seeds without the aid 

 of pollen. Robert Brown Lindley, the two Hookers, myself and 

 others subjected the Coelebogyne to strict and repeated examina- 

 tions but the result invariably was a confirmation of the case as 

 stated by Smith ; the Parthenogenesis of this plant was 

 therefore generally accepted by the public of England, but on the 

 Continent of Europe it was rejected as unworthy of credit, as 

 the observations of Treseinus on Datisca cannabina, of Lecog 

 on Spinacia oleracea of Tenore, on Pistacia narbonensis, (con- 

 firmed by Bocconi on this and other species of Pistacia), and of 

 Ramisch on Mercurialis annua. All these observations were re- 

 garded as mere delusions, of which science ought to be purged as 

 speedily and completely as possible ; a fact which can take us 

 the less by surprise when we reflect that the doctrine so ably and 

 long maintained by the Horkelian school that the pollen contains 

 the true origin of the embryo and that the ovulum is merely 

 matrix — has only very recently become untenable through the 

 experiments and observations of Hofmeister, Radlkofer and others. 



A history of the embryo more in accordance with nature has 

 opened a new and enlarged field for the Parthenogenesis question, 

 and it is gratifying to find that it has already received the atten- 

 tion of various able observers ; amongst others I mention Pro- 

 fessor Alexander Braun, of Berlin, who favoured the last meeting 

 of the German Naturalists and Physcians, at Vienna, with his 



