594 



ON THE GERMINATION 



" le porte, les feuilles, et les fieurs, elles s'en eloig- 

 " nent considerablement par leur embryon, qui 

 " paroit avoir tres grand rapport avec celui de di- 

 " cotyledones But having traced the growth 

 of this supposed cotyledon from its first becoming 

 visible, to its final developement as a plant, 

 and taking for granted, as admitted by M. Poi- 

 teau himself, the analogy of the scutellum of 

 the Gramineae with the double cotyledon of di- 

 cotyledonous plants, I should on the contrary 

 conclude, that no other tribe is more decidedly 

 inonocotyledonous : nor is the distinction less evi- 

 dent in other parts of the seminal germ and evol- 

 ved plants. In the first, there is neither rostel- 

 lum nor plumula squamosa, and in the second nei- 

 ther concentric circles nor reticulated wood ; their 

 stems consisting of cylinders entirely hollow, ex- 

 cept where interrupted by the tubera, in the tro- 

 pical species chiefly, approaching to the density 

 of common wood. In short, neither the arbo- 

 rescent Ferns, as described by M. Plumier, nor 

 the Palms, as was demonstrated by the late vene- 

 rable Daubentonf, or the Smilaceae, Liliaceae, 

 and various other tribes, accurately examined by 

 M. Defontaines, do in fact afford a more striking 



* Annates du Museum, (Lu \ la classe de Sciences Phy- 

 siques, de l'lnstitute, 31. Octobre 1808). 



t Mem, de V Academ. de Sciences, 1790 ; on the Dat$ 

 Palm. 



