SOME OBSEEVATIONS, &c. m^ 



The account which the celebrated Hedwig has given of the 

 sexes of Mosses seems to be founded on so ample aninduction, 

 and is now so generally received, that it must be [un]necessary 

 to notice the arguments which mere theoretical botanists have 

 from time to time produced against it. There is, however, 

 one author, Mons. Palisot Beauvois, who has not only 

 objected to the account of Hedwig, but has proposed a 

 theory of his own, and who, consequently, appealing to 

 actual observations, and appearing to have particularly 

 studied, specifically at least, this tribe of plants, merits 

 some attention. The earliest account of Mons. Beauvois' 

 theory is to be found in the observations added to the order 

 Musci, in the "Genera Plantarum" of Jussieu; and it was soon 

 after more fully given by the author himself in a Memoir on 

 the Sexual Organs of Mosses, published in the third volume 

 of the American Philosophical Transactions : since that 

 time he has, in his different works, occasionally treated of the 

 same subject, and has lately repeated the substance of his 

 original essay, in the introduction to his "Prodrome des 

 Cinquieme et iSiwieme Families de V ^thiogamie" published 

 at Paris in 1805, a translation of which is given by my 

 friend Mr. Konig, in the second volume of the Annals of 

 Botany. To this work, as it must be in the hand of im 

 every scientific botanist, I refer for a full account of M. 

 Beauvois' hypothesis, and confine myself to observing, that 

 what is generally called the capsule of mosses, is by him 

 considered as the containing organ of both sexes ; that the 

 granules which Hedwig supposes to be seeds, he regards as 

 pollen ; the real seeds according to him being imbedded in 



