CHAPTER 111 



9. Miscellaneous Experiments Regarding Sex in Plants. 



CAMERARIUS and Kolreuter represent the two chief land- 

 marks in the history of plant breeding and genetics up to 

 1766. While these were the only investigators whose direct 

 contributions to our knowledge of sex in plants, or of heredity 

 in the plant organism, were extensive or fundamental, it is of 

 interest to know that the hrst person who is reported to have 

 actually crossed plants artificially, was an Englishman named 

 Thomas Fairchild, who, according to Richard Bradley, Professor 

 of Botany in Cambridge University, 1724-1732, (1) in 1719 

 crossed Dianthus barbatus L. ( Sweet-William), with pollen of 

 the Carnation {Dia?ithus caryophyllus L.). The cross in question 

 was still known in gardens one hundred years later as "Fair- 

 child's Sweet-William." Nevertheless, as Focke says (2, p. 430): 



"This success in artificial fertilization was never utilized for science, 

 nor does it appear to have given gardeners any stimulus to further 

 investigations." 



It is possible that the first conception of the function of the 

 stamens of the flowers as the source of the male fertilizing ma- 

 terial is ascribable to an Englishman, Sir Thomas Millington 

 (1628-1704). Millington was a physician by education, B.A., 

 Cambridge, 1649; M.A., 1657; Fellow of All Souls College, Ox- 

 ford, 1659. He is known as having taken part in the scientific 

 meetings which gave rise to the Royal Society, of which he was 

 an original member. He became Fellow of the College of Physi- 

 cians in 1672, and was Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy 

 at Oxford from 1675 to his death in 1704. 



In a lecture on the anatomy of flowers, said to have been read 

 by Nehemiah Grew before the Royal Society, November 6, 1676, 

 the latter is quoted as follows: 



