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NEW ARRANGEMENT OF 
pearance totally absent ; and botanists, unwilling that such 
a want of uniformity should exist in the vegetable world, 
have spared no labour, and taxed their ingenuity, to dis- 
cover, in the more imperfect tribes, something at least ana- 
logous to such organs. Accoi'ding to the opinions, how- 
ever, of later physiologists, and in which we heartily con- 
cur, it is extremely improbable that acotyledonous plants 
are furnished with stamens and pistils, and that through 
their agency the seeds or reproductive sporuies are formed. 
This idea is corroborated by the common phenomenon 
which takes place in those cotyledonous plants which rarely 
bring their seeds to maturity ; small bulbs {gemmee)^ ana- 
logous to the sporulye of the Cryptogamia, are produced 
in the axillae of the leaves, which, when they fall off, strike 
root at any part indiscriminately ; thus differing most es- 
sentially from true seeds, while the new plant which arises 
from them is equally perfect. This appears also to have 
been nearly the opinion that Dillenius * entertained re- 
specting the propagation of the Musci, and it has been 
confirmed in later times by the celebrated Richard, and 
others. 
What the organs really are, in the plants under review, 
which the accurate Hedwig so well figured and described 
under the name of stamens, we leave to others to decide ; 
but we cannot help entering our protest against those bo- 
dies called Stamina and Pistilla (the young theca) being 
regarded in a snuilar light with the same organs in more 
perfect plants. " Though," says SritENGEL,-f- " I have 
formerly been a zealous advocate for Hedwig's theory of 
the Fructification of Mosses, it has nevertheless appeared 
» Dill. Hist. Muse p. 229. 
f Int. to Crypt. Plants, Letter xvii. p. 260. of the English edition. 
