562 
APPENDIX. 
[B. 
dus est sed pro nudo polline, quod unusquisque qui unquam 
pollen antherarum in plantis examinavit fatebitur*.” That 
this opinion, so confidently held by Linnaeus, was never 
adopted by any other botanist, seems in part to have arisen 
from his having extended it to dorsiferous Ferns. Limited 
to Cycadeae, however, it does not appear to me so very im- 
probable, as to deserve to be rejected without examination. 
It receives, at least, sojne support from the separation, in 
several cases, especially in the American Zamiae, of the- 
grains into two distinct, and sometimes nearly marginal, 
masses, representing, as it may be supposed, the lobes of an 
anthera ; and also from their approximation in definite num- 
bers, generally in fours, analogous to the quaternary union of 
the grains of pollen, not unfrequent in the antherae of several 
other families of plants. The great size of the supposed 
grains of pollen, with the thickening and regular bursting of 
their membrane, may be said to be circumstances obviously 
connected with their production and persistence on the 
surface of an anthera, distant from the female flower ; and 
with this economy, a corresponding enlargement of the 
contained particles or fovilla might also be expected. On 
examining these particles, however, I find them not only 
equal in size to the grains of pollen of many antherae, but, 
being elliptical and marked on one side with a longitudinal 
furrow, they have that form which is one of the most com- 
mon in the simple pollen of phaenogamous plants. To sup- 
pose, therefore, merely on the grounds already stated, that 
these particles are analogous to the fovilla, and the containing 
organs to the grains of pollen in antherae of the usual 
structure, wo^ld be entirely gratuitous. It is, at the same 
time, deserving of remark, that were this view adopted on 
* Mem. de I' Acad, des Scien. de Parisy 1775, p. 518. 
