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XLIII On the Fertilization of the Female Blossoms of 

 Filberts. In a Letter to the Secretary. By the Rev. 

 George Swayne, C. M. H. S. 



Read February 18, 1823. 



Dear Sir, 



have it recorded, as an undoubted fact, in the Annals 

 of Botany,* that the flowers of a male Palm tree-f* (Palma 

 major foliis flabelliformibus), which were carried from Leipsic 

 to Berlin, a distance of twenty miles, and there suspended 

 over the branches of a female tree of the same species, caused 

 the latter to yield, in the first year of the experiment, above 

 one hundred ripe fruit, and, on repeating it the second year, 

 two thousand, though the tree had for thirty years preceding 

 regularly blossomed without ever perfecting fruit. There 

 is some reason to believe, that by a similar operation, with 



* See Philosophical Transactions for the year 1751. Vol-xlvii. page 169. 

 f The name of " Palma major foliis flabelliformibus," as given in the paper of 

 the Philosophical Transactions referred to, is not to be found in any of the works 

 extant at the time, which treat on plants, and a difficulty has in consequence 

 arisen in ascertaining the particular species of Palm which was the subject of the 

 experiment. Linn^us, in his Disquisition de Sexu plantarum, (Amoen. Acad. 

 VoL x. p. 125.) adverting to the fact, states the plant to have been Phoenix dac- 

 tylifera, the Date Palm, and mentions his having young plants in his own garden 

 at Upsal, raised from the Dates produced by the experiment. Sir J ames Smith, 

 however, in a note to his Introduction to Botany, (3rd edition, page 245), con- 

 jectures it to have been Rhaphis flabelliformis, from the use of the terms " foliis 

 flabelliformibus" in the original paper. 



