i58 HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY. 



the albumen or perisperm of the grain is analogous to the ^vhite of thi 

 egg of birds, or the allantoid of viviparous animals. 



Sexes of Plants. The attribution of sexes to plants, is a notion 

 which was very early adopted ; but only gradually unfolded into dis- 

 tinctness and generality." The ancients were acquainted with the 

 fecundation of vegetables. Empedocles, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Pliny, 

 and some of the poets, make mention of it ; but their notions were 

 very incomplete, and the conception was again lost in the general ship- 

 wreck of human knowledge. A Latin poem, composed in the fifteenth 

 century by Jovianus Pontanus, the preceptor of Alphonso, King of 

 Naples, is the first modern work in which mention is made of the sex 

 of plants. Pontanus sings the loves of two date-palms, which grew at 

 the distance of fifteen leagues from each other : the male at Brunclusium, 

 the female at Otranto. The distance did not prevent the female from 

 becoming fruitful, as soon as the palms had raised their heads above 

 the surrounding trees, so that nothing intervened directly between 

 them, or, to speak with the poet, so that they were able to see each 

 other. 



Zaluzian, a botanist who lived at the end of the fifteenth century, 

 says that the greater part of the species of plants are androgynes, that 

 is, have the properties of the male and of the female united in the 

 same plant ; but that some species have the two sexes in separate 

 individuals ; and he adduces a passage of Pliny relative to the fecun- 

 dation of the date-palm. John Bauhin, in the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century, cites the expressions of Zaluzian ; and forty years 

 later, a professor of Tubingen, Rudolph Jacob Canierarius, pointed out 

 clearly the organs of generation, and proved by experiments on the 

 mulberry, on maize, and on the plant called Mercury (mercurialis), 

 that when by any means the action of the stamina upon the pistils is 

 intercepted, the seeds are barren. Camerarius, therefore, a philoso- 

 pher in other respects of little note, has the honor assigned him of 

 being the author of the discovery of the sexes of plants in modern 

 times. 10 



The merit of this discovery will, perhaps, appear more considerable 

 when it is recollected that it was rejected at first by very eminent 

 botanists. Thus Tournefort, misled by insufficient experiments, main- 

 tained that the stamina are excretory organs ; and Reaumur, at the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century, inclined to the same doctrine. 



9 Mirbel, El. ii. 538. 10 Mirbel, ii. 539 



