Page:Miscellaneousbot01brow.djvu/514

 496 year, that he considers the analogous glands, existing in most other tribes of Orchideæ, as equally belonging to the stamen: in his "Introduction," however, he refers them to the stigma in all cases except in Ophrydeæ.

Towards the end of 1830 the first part of Mr. Francis Bauer's Illustrations of Orchideous Plants edited by Mr. Lindley, was published.

From this work, of the importance and beauty of which it is impossible to speak too highly, it may be collected that Mr. Bauer's opinion or theory of impregnation in Orchideæ does not materially differ from that of Batsch, Richard, and other more recent writers. From one of the figures it appears that this theory had occurred to him as early as 1792; and in another figure, bearing the same date, he has accurately represented the structure of the grains of pollen in a plant belonging to Ophrydeæ, a structure which I had not ascertained in that tribe till 1806. Although Mr. Bauer's theory is essentially the same as that of Batsch and Richard, yet there are some points in which it may be considered peculiar; and chiefly in his supposing impregnation to take effect long before the ex- 693] pansion of the flower, at a time when the sexual organs are so placed with relation to each other that the fecundating matter, believed by him to pass from the pollen mass through its caudicula, where that part exists, to the gland attached to it, may be readily communicated to the stigma, with which the gland is then either in absolute contact or closely approximated. The more important points of this account may be extended to nearly the whole order, but is strictly applicable only to Satyrinæ or Ophrydeæ, a tribe in which Mr. Bauer seems, with Mr. Lindley, to consider the glands as belonging to the stamen and not to the stigma. In those genera of this tribe in which the glands