SOME OBSERVATIONS, &c.[312
The account which the celebrated Hedwig has given of the sexes of Mosses seems to be founded on so ample an induction, and is now so generally received, that it must be [un]necessary to notice the arguments which mere theoretical botanists have from time to time produced against it. There is, however, one author, Mons. Palisot Beauvois, who has not only objected to the account of Hedwig, but has proposed a theory of his own, and who, consequently, appealing to actual observations, and appearing to have particularly studied, specifically at least, this tribe of plants, merits some attention. The earliest account of Mons. Beauvois' theory is to be found in the observations added to the order Musci, in the "Genera Plantarum" of Jussieu; and it was soon after more fully given by the author himself in a Memoir on the Sexual Organs of Mosses, published in the third volume of the American Philosophical Transactions: since that time he has, in his different works, occasionally treated of the same subject, and has lately repeated the substance of his original essay, in the introduction to his "Prodrome des Cinquième et Sixième Familles de l'Æthiogamie," published at Paris in 1805, a translation of which is given by my friend Mr. Konig, in the second volume of the Annals of Botany. To this work, as it must be in the hand of [313 every scientific botanist, I refer for a full account of M. Beauvois' hypothesis, and confine myself to observing, that what is generally called the capsule of mosses, is by him considered as the containing organ of both sexes; that the granules which Hedwig supposes to be seeds, he regards as pollen; the real seeds according to him being imbedded in
