many less gifted observers in the course of many years. But
the same thing happened now, which happens often in similar
cases and which happened to Camerarius; a much longer time
elapsed before others learnt to understand the meaning and
importance of Koelreuter's labours, than he had found necessary for making his discoveries.
Koelreuter's most important and best-known work appeared in four portions in 1761, 1763, 1764 and 1766 under the title, 'Vorlaufige Nachricht von einigen das Geschlecht der Pflanzen betreffenden Versuchen und Beobachtungen'; we shall endeavour to give a brief summary of the more important results.
At different places in this work occur remarks and experi- ments on arrangements for pollination, which up to that time had been seldom and only hastily observed. As the pollen-tube had not yet been discovered, and Koelreuter himself set out with the view, that a fluid finds its way from the pollen-grains as they lie on the stigma to the ovules, it was important first of all to determine the quantity of pollen which is required for the complete fertilisation of an ovary; with this object in view Koelreuter counted the pollen-grains formed in a particular flower and compared them with the number required to be applied to the stigma in order to effect complete fertilisation, and he found that the latter number was much the smaller. For instance, he counted four thousand eight hundred and sixty-three pollen-grains in a flower of Hibiscus venetianus, while from fifty to sixty were sufficient to produce more than thirty fertile seeds in the ovary; in Mirabilis jalapa and Mirabilis longiflora he counted about three hundred grains of pollen in the anthers, while from two to three or even one sufficed for fertilisation in the one-ovuled ovary. He also tried, whether in flowers with divided and even deeply-cleft styles fertilisation could be effected in all compartments of the ovary through one of them only, and he found that it could.
Koelreuter directed special attention to the arrangements,
