unfavorable to the opinion of the transmission of the particles of the pollen to the ovulum, than to that which considers the direct action of these particles as confined to the external parts of the female organ.
The observations, of which I have now given a brief account, were made in the months of June, July, and August, 1827. Those relating merely to the form and motion of the peculiar particles of the pollen were stated, and several of the objects shown, during these months, to many of my friends, particularly to Messrs. Bauer and Bicheno, Dr. Bostock, Dr. Fitton, Mr. E. Forster, Dr. Henderson, Sir Everard Home, Captain Home, Dr. Horsfield, Mr. Koenig, M. Lagasca, Mr. Lindley, Dr. Maton, Mr. Menzies, Dr. Front, Mr. Renouard, Dr. Roget, Mr. Stokes, and Dr. Wollaston; and the general existence of the active molecules in inorganic as well as organic bodies, their apparent indestructibility by heat, and several of the facts respecting the primary combinations of the molecules were communicated to Dr. Wollaston and Mr. Stokes in the last week of August.
None of these gentlemen are here appealed to for the [15 correctness of any of the statements made; my sole object in citing them being to prove from the period and general extent of the communication, that my observations were made within the dates given in the title of the present summary.
The facts ascertained respecting the motion of the particles of the pollen were never considered by me as wholly original; this motion having, as I knew, been obscurely seen by Needham, and distinctly by Gleichen, who not only observed the motion of the particles in water after the bursting of the pollen, but in several cases marked their change of place within the entire grain. He has not, however, given any satisfactory account either of the forms or of the motions of these particles, and in some cases appears to have confounded them with the elementary molecule, whose existence he was not aware of.
Before I engaged in the inquiry in 1827, I was acquainted only with the abstract given by M. Adolphe
