THE PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE AND JOURNAL: COMPREHENDING THE VARIOUS BRANCHES OF SCIENCE, THE LIBERAL AND FINE ARTS, GEOLOGY, AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, AND COMMERCE. BY ALEXANDER TILLOCH, M.R.L.A. M.G.S. F.S.A. EDIN. AND PERTH, M.R.A.S. MUNICH, M.S.E.I.N. "Nec aranearum sane textus ideo melior quia ex se fila gignunt, nec noster vilior quia VOL. LVI. For JULY, AUgust, septemBER, OCTOBER, november, LONDON: PRINTED BY RICHARD AND ARTHUR TAYLOR, SHOE LANE: And sold by CADELL and DAVIES; Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and and Co. Edinburgh: BRASH and REID; DUNCAN LIBRA PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE AND JOURNAL. 1. On the Physiology of Botany. By Mrs. IBBETSON. To Mr. Tilloch. SIR, -As I am precluded from presenting to the public that work now ready for the press, by an opposition that in my present state of weakness I am wholly unable to stem; yet I cannot but make one effort more to introduce to my countrymen that beautiful series of facts in botanical physiology, which appear to me unanswerable, and could only have been procured by means of progressive dissection, following each ingredient of flower-bud, seed, pollen, &c. &c. from the place in which they were made, and from the moment of their formation in the interior one year, till they are completed, and then decayed at the exterior the next year. In my application to booksellers I was assured, that after consulting the first botanists, it was decided that no new facts were wanted. I confess I was so simple as to think, after a long progressive study, that no part of the physiology of a plant was known; that we neither knew where the flower-bud was formed, the embryo of the seed protruded, and particularly what caused the very visible motion so apparent in a plant; nor did we understand how the root differed from the stem, or the stem from the new shoot. Yet all these points are the chief foundation of vegetable œconomy, the laws by which they are governed, and follow each other with such perfect precision, that the first may be said almost mathematically to prove the rest. It is the opinion of botanists in general, and of Sir Ed. Smith and Mr. Knight in particular, that the flower-bud (Plate I. fig. 1, dd) is formed in the alburnum. It is then made at the exterior of the wood: and it is rather impossible to conceive how the wood when cut into floors or planes, should be marked all the way not only with knots but with young buds just starting from the line of life next the pith. A 2 Vol. 56. No, 267. July 1820. View |