342 LINNiEUS AND THE JUSSIEUS 



artfully placed that they turn every way with the least 

 wind," they are of about the same length as the style, 

 whose top is "villous," so as to catch the pollen as it 

 flies out of the anther. The rain washes, or the wind 

 shakes the pollen down the tube, till it reaches the 

 ovary. In garlic the anthers overtop the style, so as to 

 shed the pollen more easily into its orifice. Morland 

 recommends those who possess good microscopes and 

 skill in managing them to find out " whether the ova 

 or unimpregnated seeds are ever to be found without a 

 seminal plant [embryo]." He mentions the perforation 

 (micropyle) of beans, peas, &c., "at which, I suppose, 

 the seminal plant did enter." 



Claude Joseph Geoffroy^ developed a little further 

 the explanation offered by Morland. His chief con- 

 tribution to the discussion is the mistaken statement 

 that the anthers and stigma are regularly so placed that 

 the pollen can fall from one to the other. Whether the 

 flower is erect or drooping, the anthers, he says, stand 

 higher than the stigma.^ He saw that in drooping 

 flowers the stigma will not face the anther from which 

 the pollen is to fall, but this difficulty did not lead him 

 to see whether he had not made some mistake. It is 

 surprising that Linnaeus should have adopted twenty- 

 five years later, and apparently without inquiry, a 

 statement so questionable.^ 



Richard Bradley, who was afterwards professor of 



• " Observations sur la structure et I'usage des principales parties des 

 fleurs." Acad, des Sciences, 1711, pp. 210-234. A short notice of Geoffroy 

 will be found on p. 230. 



^Geoffrey's supposition would have been disproved by a tolerably extensive 

 survey of actual flowers, which would have shown among other things how 

 often the relative positions of anther and stigma vary with the stage of ripe- 

 ness ; in many eases the ripe stigma occupies the very same place which was 

 previously occupied by the ripe anthers. 



" Supra, -p. 323. 



