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301 THE FERTILISATION OF THE SUGAR-CANE.
" Port Louis, Nov. 12th, 1884.
"At the last sitting but one I made a communication to you on
the fertilisation of the Sugar-cane flower, and on the development
of the embryo in situ. I have reason now to regret that I was not
able at the time to produce the specimens in support of my case.
The little which is now left of them, and for which I have to thank
M. C. Baschet, I will place before you. You see in this little box
and the accompanying sketches the remains of a panicle:
"1. A scrap of peduncle with a j)air of barren spikelets at each
of its nodes, one spikelet sessile, the other stalked, with glumes and
pales spreading at their base. 2. An internode producing at its
lower end a pair of spikelets ; the sessile one, four times the ordinary
size, is an early development of fertilisation, and has both glumes
and pales spreading at its base. 3. A fertile spikelet, five times
ordinary size, stalked, and with spreading glumes and pales,
4. A pair of transformed spikelets ; a little plant replaces axis for
axis the sessile spikelet, and the peduncle bears a remnant of the
fertilised flower ; the latter is not then completely free.
" The Secretary of the Societe Royale des Arts et des Sciences,
who arrived in Mauritius a month after the occurrence, says he has
seen a specimen of the panicles, and only observed the following:
1. Simple shoots, situated in the axillary portions of the inflorescence.
2. That the extremities of the peduncles of the flowers which have
fallen, according to him, as usual, have no shoots. 8. That if the
grain had existed, it would occupy the same place as the flower,
viz., the end of the peduncle. 4. That each shoot separately
examined does not have the scales which envelope the flower, and
which persist in all grasses as an envelope of the grain. 5. That
these shoots bear no trace of a grain or a seed-leaf,
" What we have already shown you would be a sufiBcient answer.
However, we will go further :
"1. The axillary portions of the inflorescence means, as you
know, the axils of all the divisions of the panicle. I suppose the
shoots are not found in all the angles at once, and that the
Secretary means only the axil between each pair of spikelets and
the last axis of the panicle. Now, those who have seen the little
plants have seen them, as in the specimen before you, in the place of
the spikelets axis for axis, and not in any axillary portion of the
inflorescence at all. M. C. Baschet and Dr. Le Bobinec have seen
it to be so.
" 2. The extremities of the peduncles are not free from flowers,
and the flowers have not all fallen, for here is a peduncle with an
enormously developed flower which the Secretary calls a shoot.
" 3. This development of the flower indicates, then, the position
of the grain at the extremity of the peduncle.
" 4. The scales enveloping the flower, which we interpi'et as
glumes, do exist here. We are not confounding them with the
paleoles of the fruit. We say fruit, and not grain, because the
envelopes of the one are not exactly those of the other.
" 5. The development of the grain causes the destruction of the
rest of the fruit, and that is why, at a certain stage, no trace of the