CHAP, i.] From Aristotle to Camerarius. 381 



traditional knowledge on the subject to some kind of theory. 

 The foetus, he says, is a part of the nature of plants, which 

 they produce out of themselves, and is thus distinguished 

 from the shoot which grows from the plant, as a part from 

 the whole, but the other as a whole from a whole. He quotes 

 Pliny almost word for word where he says, that observers of 

 nature maintain that all plants are of both sexes, but in some 

 the sexes are conjoined, in others they are separate ; in many 

 plants the male and female are united, and these have the 

 power of propagation in themselves, like many androgynous 

 animals ; and he explains this, more explicitly than Aristotle, 

 from defect of locomotion in plants. This is the case, he says, 

 with the majority of plants. In some, as the palm, the 

 male and female are separated, and the female without 

 the male produces no fruit, and where the dust from the 

 male does not reach the female plant by natural means, 

 man can assist. Zaluziansky like other writers is anxious that 

 plants of different sexes should not be taken for different 

 species. He refers also to the popular distinction of many 

 plants into male and female according to certain external 

 peculiarities. 



Jung again must certainly have known the facts and views that 

 were current in his time ; but there is nothing in his botanical 

 writings to show that he entertained the idea of a real sexuality 

 in plants, of the necessity of the co-operation of two sexes in 

 the work of propagation. It might almost be believed that 

 the most learned and serious men, such as Cesalpino and 

 Jung, were just those, who regarded the hypothesis of 

 sexuality in plants as an absurdity, and shrunk from its con- 

 sideration. This impression is conveyed too by Malpighi's 

 ' Anatomic des Plantes.' It was Malpighi who gave the first 

 careful account of the development of the seed, and studied 

 the earlier stages in the growth of the embryo in the embryo- 

 sac ; and yet even he says nothing of the co-operation of the 

 dust contained in the anthers in the formation of the embryo, 



