Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/423

] tion of plants, Wolff says: 'Ordinarily plants are produced from seeds, for the seed not only contains the plant in embryo but also its first food.' He says that propagation by means of buds is equally natural, for each bud contains a branch in little. 'We find inside in the flower a number of stalks disposed in a circle, and something at the top of each, which is full of dust and lets the dust fall on the tipper part of that which holds the seed; this organ is compared by some to the genitals of the animal, and the dust to the male seed; they think also that the seed is made fruitful by the dust, and that therefore the embryo must be conveyed by the dust into the seed-case and there be formed into seeds. I have proposed to examine into the matter, but I have always let it escape me.'. . . 'Since all that has been hitherto adduced is found also in flowers which spring from bulbs, and it is also certain that the leaves of bulbs have consequently embryos in them ... it is easy to see that the embryos must come from the leaves of the bulbs. And since they could as easily be conveyed from there into the seed-grains with the sap, as into the dust which is produced in the upper part of the flower, I am inclined to think that this is the true account of the matter and that it will be confirmed by experience. But now comes the main question, whence come the embryos into the sap; since they have not an external figure only but an internal structure also, it is not plain how they can be formed either by the mere inner movement of the sap, or by separation of certain parts. . . . And this is certainly more credible, that the embryos already exist in little in the sap and the plant, before they are brought by some change into the condition in which they are met with in the seed and in buds. l!ut there is the further question where they were previously. They must either lie one in another in a minute form, as Malebranche especially maintains, or they are brought from the air and the earth with the nourishing sap into the plant, an idea which Honoratus Fabri Advanced and Perrault and Sturm developed after him. According to the