Page:Makers of British botany.djvu/230

 186 simplest expression—to an "amnios" or embryo-sac. And he observed the extension of the embryo-sacs up the style and the union of the pollen tube with the tip of the embryo-sac. His further description of the development of the embryo, endosperm and fruit is wonderfully exact if we allow for his regarding the long suspensor bearing the embryo as derived from the pollen tube growing down through the long embryo-sac.

Griffith thus recognised all the main peculiarities of Viscum and of Loranthus subsequently described more in detail in European species by Hofmeister (whose analysis of Griffith's work in 1859 is a great testimony to its accuracy) and later by Treub in the tropical species which had been studied by Griffith.

The Balanophoraceae was another group, on which Griffith made pioneer investigations. He collected and examined all the species he met with, partly from the systematic interest in supporting Robert Brown's objection to Lindley's class of Rhizantheae, but still more from his interest in the details of their reproduction. An examination of the plates from his memoirs, only published after his death, in the Linnean Transactions will show how fully he was aware of the structure of the archegonium-like female flower of Balanophora; of the relation of the pollen-grains and pollen tubes to it; and of the appearance of the endosperm which he mistook for the embryo. Throughout he compares the structure with the pistillum (archegonium) of Bryophyta.

Thus in the Balanophoraceae also Griffith laid the foundations on which the work of Hofmeister, and more recently that of Treub and Lotsy follow.

When at Malacca Griffith interested himself among many other problems in the ovule and the development of the seed of Avicennia. He had previously paid attention to the viviparous embryos of other Mangroves. This piece of work, when compared with Treub's re-examination of Avicennia, brings out so clearly Griffith's accuracy, so far as his means of observation allowed him to go, that we may look for a moment at how these two investigations, separated by forty years, compare.

Griffith recognised the development of the embryo-sac in