THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 497 



stamens, with which the experiment v/as made, was 

 removed from the green-house, the abandoned wife re- 

 mained quite stei'ile.^ 



A few years subsequently to the time of this learned 

 botanist, Gleditsch likewise proved the fecundation of 

 plants by a transcendent demonstration. He had in his 

 garden at Berlin a female palm-tree, the verdant crown of 

 Avhich yearly overshadowed numerous flowers, and each 

 year these were infallibly stricken with sterility. But 

 having learned that there was a male plant of the same 

 species floimshing at Dresden, he conceived the idea of 

 sending for some of the pollen in order to artificially im- 

 pregnate the one in his possession. The pollen dust was 

 immediately sent to him by the post, and a short time after 

 he had sprinkled it upon the stigmas of his palm-tree, he 

 beheld all the flowers fecundated by the contact produce 

 a corresponding number of fruits." 



Insects play a great part in vegetable life; some botanists 

 even consider them as the principal agents in fecundity. 

 While working their Avay among the stamens and pistils 

 they bear off the fertilizing dust from the former and trans- 

 port it to the others. The farmers on the banks of the 

 lihine have even remarked, that the orchards in which 

 bees are reared, are more productive than those in which 

 there are none. 



In the Levant insects are thought to have a certain 



^ It is in l]is memoir on the Carriage of Plants that LiiinfEiis wrote, on tlie 

 two Mercuriales experimented njjon, the phrase which has become so celebrated: 

 "Love inflames plants," amor urit plaatas. 



2 On one of my visits to Strasburgh, Professor Fee showed me a female palm- 

 tree on which he had repeated Gleditsch's experiment with equal success. It was 

 a dwarf-palm tree, Chamcerops humilis, the flowers of which were fecundated witli 

 pollen sent from a distance to the illustrious botanist. He simply sprinlcled it 

 upon them. All the fruit was developing perfectly upon this palm-tree when I 

 saw it in the month of August, 18.55. 



