In 1806 Mons. Turpin[1] published a memoir on the organ by which the fecundating fluid is introduced into the vegetable ovulum. The substance of this memoir is, that in all Phænogamous plants fecundation takes place through a cord or fasciculus of vessels entering the outer coat of the ovulum, at a point distinct from, but, at the period of impregnation, closely approximated to the umbilicus; and to the cicatrix of this cord, which itself is soon obliterated, he gives the name of Micropyle: that the ovulum has two coats each having its proper umbilicus, or, as he terms it, omphalode; that these coats in general correspond in direction; that more rarely the inner membrane is, with relation to the outer, inverted; and that towards the origin of the inner membrane the radicle of the embryo uniformly points.
It is singular that a botanist, so ingenious and experienced as M. Turpin, should, on this subject, instead of appealing in every case to the unimpregnated ovulum, have apparently contented himself with an examination of the ripe seed. Hence, however, he has formed an erroneous opinion of the nature and origin, and in some plants of the situation, of the micropyle itself, and hence also he has in all cases mistaken the apex for the base of the nucleus.
A minute examination of the early state of the ovulum does not seem to have entered into the plan of the late celebrated M. Richard, when in 1808 he published his valuable and original Analyse du Fruit. The ovulum has, [546 according to him, but one covering, which in the ripe seed he calls episperm. He considers the centre of the hilum as the base, and the chalaza, where it exists, as the natural apex of the seed.
M. Mirbel, in 1815, though admitting the existence of the foramen or micropyle of the testa,[2] describes the ovulum as receiving by the hilum both nourishing and fecundating vessels,[3] and as consisting of a uniform parenchyma, in which the embryo appears at first a minute point, gradually converting more or less of the surrounding tissue into its
