in which the existence of sexual organs had not been universally admitted.
In the supposed stamina of both these families, namely, in the cylindrical antheræ or pollen of Mosses, and on the surface of the four spathulate bodies surrounding the naked ovulum, as it may be considered, of Equisetum, I found minute spherical particles, apparently of the same size with the molecule described in Onagrariæ, and having equally 8] vivid motion on immersion in water; and this motion was still observable in specimens both of Mosses and of Equiseta, which had been dried upwards of one hundred years.
The very unexpected fact of seeming vitality retained by these minute particles so long after the death of the plant would not perhaps have materially lessened my confidence in the supposed peculiarity. But I at the same time observed, that on bruising the ovula or seeds of Equisetum, which at first happened accidentally, I so greatly increased the number of moving particles, that the source of the added quantity could not be doubted. I found also that on bruising first the floral leaves of Mosses, and then all other parts of those plants, that I readily obtained similar particles, not in equal quantity indeed, but equally in motion. My supposed test of the male organ was therefore necessarily abandoned.
Reflecting on all the facts with which I had now become acquainted, I was disposed to believe that the minute spherical particles or Molecules of apparently uniform size, first seen in the advanced state of the pollen of Onagrariæ, and most other Phænogamous plants,–then in the antheræ of Mosses and on the surface of the bodies regarded as the stamina of Equisetum,–and lastly in bruised portions of other parts of the same plants, were in reality the supposed constituent or elementary Molecules of organic bodies, first so considered by Buffon and Needham, then by Wrisberg with greater precision, soon after and still more particularly by Müller, and, very recently, by Dr. Milne Edwards, who has revived the doctrine and supported it with much interesting detail. I now therefore expected to find these molecules in all organic bodies: and accordingly on examining
