Of Flower si 2S9 
Sftd do the office of impregnation; hut Mr. Geoffroy 
rather takes it, that the wind doing the office of a vehicle, 
brings the farina of the males to the females. 
For the manner wherein the farina fecundities, Mr, 
Geoffroy advances two opinions, i. That the farina being 
always found of a fulphurous compofition, and full of 
fubtile penetrating parts, falling on the piftii of the flowers, 
there refolves, and the fubtileft of its parts penetrating 
the fubftance of the piftii and young fruit, excite a fer¬ 
mentation fufficient to open and unfold the young plant, 
contained in the embrio of the feed 5 in this hypothefis 
the feed is fuppofed to contain the plant in miniature, 
only wanting a proper juice to unfold its parts and make 
them grow. 
The fecond opinion is, that the farina of the flower is 
the firft germ, or bud of the new plant 4 , and needs no¬ 
thing to unfold it, and enable it to grow, but the juice 
it finds prepared in the embrio’s of the feed. 
The reader will here obferve, that thefe two theories 
of vegetable generation, bear a ftrict analogy to thofe of 
animal generation, viz. either that the young animal is 
in the femen mafeulinum, and only needs the juice of the 
matrix to cherifh and bring it forth, or that the animal 
is contained in the female ovum, and needs only the male 
feed to excite a fermentation. 
Mr. Geoffroy takes the proper feed to be in the farina, 
becaufe the belt microfcopes do not aifeover the leafj ap- 
pearance of any bud in the little embrio’s of the grains, 
when examined before the apices have fheJ their dull:. 
In leguminous plants, if the leaves and ftamina be re¬ 
moved, and the piftii, or that part which becomes the 
pod, be viewed with the microfcope, ere yet the flower 
be opened, the little green tranfparent veficulae, which 
are to become the grains, will appear in their natural 
U order,- 
