Read June 3, 1817.
Dear Sir,
Professor Brotero's description of the Lycopodium denticulatum agrees so exactly with the plant of which I send you some figures, Tab. XIX., that I have nothing to add to it, except that I have never found the capsule three-lobed, as he says it is, but invariably four-lobed: in some positions, however, it appears three-lobed, and he himself mentions that it always contains four seeds.
Notwithstanding I have examined many flowering branches, I have not been able to detect the manner in which the seeds are fœcundated, or to find any thing like an Embryo in them, though they come up in abundance spontaneously under the parent plant, and on the adjacent moist parts of the shelf, where it stands in Mr. Joseph Knight's greenhouse.
The seeds contain at an early period of their formation a clear liquor, which quickly evaporates, and flashes when applied to a candle: this liquor soon becomes milky, and is finally converted into what appears to me grumous albumen.—I am not certain how the seeds are inserted, and believe that I have not yet been so lucky as to meet with a single fœcundated seed, though perfect in all other respects; for this occurs in Cycas, when there is no male plant to fœcundate its seeds. In one capsule, in which the
