493 ON THE ORGANS AND MODE 01-' FECUNDATION 



which convey the absorbed fluid from that organ to the 

 ovarium. 



In 1804, Salisbury^ asserts that he had succeeded in 

 6881 impregnating many species belonging to different tribes 

 of Orchidese, by applying the pollen masses to the stigma, 

 whose channel communicating with the cavity of tbe 

 ovarium, and first noticed by Haller, he also describes. 



In 1827, Professor L. C. Treviranus^ published an ac- 

 count of several experiments made by him in 1824, which 

 satisfactorily prove that impregnation in this family may 

 be effected by the direct application of the pollen to the 

 stigma. 



About the end of 1830 a letter from Professor Amici^ 

 to M. Mirbel was published, in which that distinguished 

 microscopical observer asserts that in many phseuogamous 

 plants the pollen tubes, or boyaiuv, penetrate through tlie 

 style into the cavity of the ovarium, and are applied directly 

 to the ovula. 



In this important communication Orchidese are not 

 mentioned, but M. Adolphe Brongniart in a note states 

 that he himself has seen the production of hoyaux or pollen 

 tubes even in this family ; that here, however, as Avell as 

 in all the other tribes in which he had examined these 

 tubes, he found them to terminate in the tissue of the 

 stigma. 



Of the second class of authors the earliest is Linnaeus,* 

 who, in 1764, not satisfied either with his own or any 

 other description then given of the stigma, inquires whether 

 the influence of the pollen may not be communicated in- 

 ternally to the ovarium. 



In 1770, Schmidel,'^ in an accoiuit which he gives of a 

 species of Epipactis, describes and figures the upper lip of 

 the stigma, the rostellum of Richard, with its gland both 

 before and after the bursting of the anthera ; and as he 



' Linn. Sac. Transact, vii, p. 29. " Zeitschrift f. Physiol, ii, p. 325 

 ■* Amial. cks So. Nat. xxi, p. 329. ' 



Pralect. in Old. Nat. ed. Oise/ce, p. 183. 

 " Gesn. Op. Bof. hist, plant, fasc. ii, p. 15, tab. 19. 



