9 
SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 
NO. I. — SEED OF PLANTS. 
The practice of impregnating flowers in order to produce varieties, has, of late, 
been extensively adopted by florists and amateurs ; but this is done solely for an 
object of curiosity or gain, and is rarely investigated philosophically. Were our 
horticulturists aware of the astonishing phenomena which inevitably attend every 
process of impregnation, their object would assume another form, and c< admiration 
the superlative of praise " would succeed to vain and unworthy emulation. In the 
last edition of Lindley's Elements of Botany (1841), p. 56, there is a most beautiful 
wood-cut, descriptive of the processes of impregnation. We take the liberty to 
extract a few paragraphs from the letter-press of the same page, to introduce some 
remarks which offer themselves as a necessary consequence. 
" No. 466. Impregnation is effected by contact between the pollen and the 
stigma." We need scarcely observe, that by the term pollen, is to be understood 
the farina, or dust which escapes from the anthers of a flower, when its valves burst 
open. The stigma is the point or termination of the pistillum, pointal, or female 
organ, which secretes a viscid juice, discernible under a lens of moderate power, and 
frequently by the unassisted eye. Whether the stigma be furnished with such 
juice, or with a velvety pubescence, or whatever be the nature of its peculiarly 
appropriate surface, certain it is, that, according to the most accurate observation, 
this organ is the only portion of a perfect vegetable which is not invested with 
cuticle or epidermis. 
" 467. The pollen emits a tube of extreme delicacy, which pierces the stigma 
and style, and, passing downwards into the .ovary, enters the foramen of the 
ovule/' 
This theory is acute, yet must be received with caution, for who, and what 
instrument can detect a tube of such tenuity ? The most powerful microscope that 
ever came from the hands of that skilful optician, Ross, would, we conceive, be 
utterly inefficient. Let any one investigate the farina of the mallow by one of his 
botanical microscopes, and he will perceive a congeries of elegant spherules armed 
with hair-like points ; each grain is said to contain a fluid, in which float grains 
of starch and drops of oil. But where, then, are the tubes ? The eye cannot discover 
them, nor any trace of such infinitely minute threads in the pollen of the mallow ; 
which yet is one of the largest varieties that we are acquainted with. 
It would, we think, be more safe to refer the phenomena of impregnation to the 
absorption (by attraction between fluids of different density) of a subtile fluid 
contained in each pollen grain, and its transmission through the channel of the style, 
to the ovule. 
"468. Having readied the foramen, it comes into contact with the nucleus." 
VOL. ix. — no. xcvu. c 
