OP THK UNIMPREGNATED OVULTJM. 443 



Mr. Samuel Morland, in 1703/ in extending Leeuwen- 

 hoek's hypothesis of generation to plants, assumes the ex- 

 istence of an aperture in the Ovulnm, through which it is 

 impregnated. It appears, indeed, that he had not actually 

 observed this aperture before fecundation, but inferred its 

 existence generally and at that period, from having, as 

 he says, "discovered in the seeds of beans, peas, and 

 Phaseoli, just under one end of what we call the eye, a 

 manifest perforation, which leads directly to'the seminal ph 

 plant," and by which he supposes the embryo to have en- 

 tered. This perforation is evidently the foramen discovered 

 in the seeds of Leguminous plants by Grew, of whose ob- 

 servations respecting it he takes no notice, though he quotes 

 him in another part of his subject. 



In 1704, Etienne Francois Geoffroy,^ and in 1711, his 

 brother Claude Joseph Geoffroy,^ in support of the same 

 hypothesis, state the general existence of an aperture in the 

 unimpregnated vegetable Ovulum. It is not, however, pro- 

 bable that these authors had really seen this aperture in the 

 early state of the Ovulum in any case, but rather that they 

 had merely advanced^ from the observation of Grew, and the 

 conjecture founded on it by Morland, whose hypothesis they 

 adopt without acknowledgment, to the unqualified assertion 

 of its existence, in all cases. For it is to be remarked, that 

 they take no notice of what had previously been observed 

 or asserted on the more important parts of their subject, 

 while several passages are evidently copied, and the whole 

 account of the original state and development of the Ovu- 

 lum is literally translated from Camerarius's Essay. Nor 

 does the younger Geoffroy mention the earlier publication 

 of his brother, from which his own memoir is in great part 

 manifestly derived. 



In 1718, Vaillant,* who rejects the vermicular hypothesis 

 of generation, supposes the influence of the Pollen to con- 

 sist in an aura, conveyed by the tracheae of the style to the 



' Philosoph. Transact, vol. xxiii, n. 287, p. 1474. 



^ QiiiesHo Medica an Hominis prinwrdia Vermis.^ iii auotoris Traclalu, da 

 j]ftiteria Medica, torn. i. p. j23. 



3 Mem. de I' Acad, des Sc. de Paris, 1711, p. 210. 

 ' Discours sur la Slruciure des Fleurs, p. 20. 



