Mr. Samuel Morland, in 1703,[1] in extending Leeuwenhoek's hypothesis of generation to plants, assumes the existence of an aperture in the Ovulum, through which it is impregnated. It appears, indeed, that he had not actually observed this aperture before fecundation, but inferred its existence generally and at that period, from having, as he says, "discovered in the seeds of beans, peas, and Phascoli, just under one end of what we call the eye, a manifest perforation, which leads directly to the seminal [543 plant," and by which he supposes the embryo to have entered. This perforation is evidently the foramen discovered in the seeds of Leguminous plants by Grew, of whose observations respecting it he takes no notice, though he quotes him in another part of his subject.
In 1704, Etienne Francois Geoffroy,[2] and in 1711, his brother Claude Joseph Geoffroy,[3] in support of the same hypothesis, state the general existence of an aperture in the unimpregnated vegetable Ovulum. It is not, however, probable that these authors had really seen this aperture in the early state of the Ovulum in any case, but rather that they had merely advanced from the observation of Grew, and the conjecture founded on it by Morland, whose hypothesis they adopt without acknowledgment, to the unqualified assertion of its existence, in all cases. For it is to be remarked, that they take no notice of what had previously been observed or asserted on the more important parts of their subject, while several passages are evidently copied, and the whole account of the original state and development of the Ovulum is literally translated from Camerarius's Essay. Nor does the younger Geoffroy mention the earlier publication of his brother, from which his own memoir is in great part manifestly derived.
In 1718, Vaillant,[4] who rejects the vermicular hypothesis of generation, supposes the influence of the Pollen to consist in an aura, conveyed by the tracheæ of the style to the
- ↑ Philosoph. Transact. vol. xxiii, n. 287, p. 1174.
- ↑ Quæstio Medica an Hominis primordia Vermis? in auctoris Tractatu de Materia Medica, tom. i. p. 123.
- ↑ Mem. de l'Acad. des Sc. de Paris, 1711. p. 210.
- ↑ Discours sur la Slruclure des Fleurs, p. 20.
