By the Hon. and Rev. William Herbert. 31 



touched its stigma with dust from plants of other genera ; 

 but finding them always fail, I cut several open as soon as 

 they were ripe, and instead of the sharp pointed sprout with- 

 in, I found an empty cavity where it should have been 

 placed. It appears therefore that the cotyledon of the seed 

 may be brought to tolerable perfection without fecundation, 

 but that, the germ of the seed will not be formed without the 

 quickening dust of the male. In the same manner, I appre- 

 hend, that the egg of a bird, which has not been fecundated, 

 contains all that is analogous to the cotyledon, and serviceable 

 for the support of the embryo in its earliest stage ; but that 

 the embryo itself is not completely formed, from want of the 

 union of another requisite substance. 



I have lately had an opportunity of observing what ap- 

 pears to me to be a singular phenomenon in nature. Having 

 had reasons to consider, that the plant, known and figured 

 in the Botanical Magazine (Plate 14 J 9), as Pancratium Am- 

 boinense, belonged to a distinct genus, I was anxious to see 

 its seeds, which had never been perfected with me ; and I 

 had written to a friend at Calcutta, to request that he would 

 send me the perfect capsule and ripe seeds. I received for 

 answer, that the plant never produced seed at Calcutta, but 

 that Dr. Roxburgh had once seen it; and from some 

 resemblance to that of Crinum, he had called the plant 

 Crinum nervosum, in the Hortus Bengalensis. I had, how- 

 ever, this autumn, an opportunity of seeing the seed, from a 

 bulb I had given to Lord Milton, which stood on a back 

 flue in a very shaded situation ; and to my great surprise, 

 instead of real seeds, it had produced perfect tunicatcd 



