Posthumous papers bequeathed to ... the East India Company ... Notulae ad plantas Asiaticas. Pt. II, On the higher cryptogamous plants ... / Arranged by J. M'Clelland.

  • Griffith, William, 1810-1845.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Posthumous papers bequeathed to ... the East India Company ... Notulae ad plantas Asiaticas. Pt. II, On the higher cryptogamous plants ... / Arranged by J. M'Clelland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It is needless to enlarge upon the grounds on which 1 have based my suspicions, their value will depend entirely on the extent to which they are found to occur, and on the nature of the cause disturbing these resemblances. The same remarks apply to the objections; in which I have not included the obvious resemblances they bear to organs supposed to be of very minor importance—scales and hair : because in reality it amounts to no objection. But as it will be made, I would beg to recommend the examination of Adeno- phorus, which may throw some additional light upon the ques- tion. But after all, many will be inclined to observe, well, we grant you the similarity, and the analogies you require, but what proof have you to urge that the supposed male or- gans of Mossess etc. are male organs ; we deny the possi- bility in toto. That this remark may be made, is evident, when wre consider that Dr. Greville and Arnott deny that the pistillum of Mosses is a pistillum: and if that which is so evident is so flatly denied, what degree of denial may we not expect in regard to these organs, which even in Mosses have some obscuring circumstances connected with them. On this point, I must confess that the majority of botanists appear to me wholly unreasonable, I am sure that no other class of scien- tific observers would deny claims founded on so many obvious analogies. Is sexuality so anomalous that its advocates are exposed to such strenuous and unmeaning opposition, or has any one instance of reproduction without the agency of sexes been proved throughout a single natural family. Independently of this, why so unreasonably insist on what with our means, may be imposibilities. If they require abso- lute demonstration of all the steps of a function, they must deny that the appearance of the embyo is due to the action of the boyau. The objectors to the assumed sexual organs of Ilcdwig, Brown, and Brongniart, seem to assert that they are gemmae ; but what analogy has a sac containing grumous molecular mutter, deficient in green colouring matter with a gemma,