64 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



"In discourse hereof with our Learned Savilian (Sedleian), Professor 

 sir Thomas Millington, he told me, he conceived, That the Attire 

 (Stammens) doth serve, as the Male, for the Generation of the Seed. 

 I immediately reply'd That I was of the same Opinion." 



The date of this supposed lecture was six years earlier than 

 Grew's "Anatomy of Plants" in 1682, in which the statement is 

 repeated (4b,' 171) in almost identical words, and eighteen years 

 before the publication of Camerarius' "De Sexu Plantarum Epis- 

 tola." ^ However, the lack of experimental data to support the 

 conclusion gives the incident historical rather than scientitic value, 

 except for whatever influence it may have had upon later investi- 

 gations in the subject. 



Richard Bradley's conceptions on the subject of sexuality in 

 plants seem, according to his own statement in his "New Improve- 

 ments of Planting and Gardening," to have been derived from a 

 certain Robert Balle, likewise a member of the Royal Society. It 

 appears from Bradley's account, that he derived further sugges- 

 tions in the matter from Moreland's communication to the Royal 

 Society in 1703. (8.) Bradley's account follows: 



"The first hint of this secret [that every plant contains in itself male 

 and female powers] was communicated to me several years ago by a 

 worthy member of the Royal Society, Robert Balle, Esq. ; who had this 

 notion for above thirty years, that plants had a mode of generation 



^ The statement that Grew delivered an address before the Royal So- 

 ciety, November 6, 1676, or, according to Logan, November 9 (p. 64), 

 requires modification. A search through the volumes of the Philosophical 

 Transactions of the Royal Society for the years 1676-77 reveals no address 

 by Grew on the subject, or containing the quotation referred to. An in- 

 quiry of the office of the Royal Society was responded to by a letter from 

 the Assistant-Secretary (October 31, 1927) as follows: 



"The supposed quotation from a paper by Grew seems certainly at 

 fault. We trace no such paper in the Philos;;phical Transactions. There 

 was no meeting on November 6, 1676. There was a meeting on Novem- 

 ber 9, and at that meeting Grew gave a Lecture on Flowers. This seem» 

 never to have appeared in print before the publication of his 'Anatomy 

 of Plants' in 1682. But the lecture was ordered to be 'registered' and 

 we have it copied in MS in vol. 5 of our 'Register Book' series. We have 

 glanced through the copy page by page (there are 10 pages of it) but 

 we failed to trace the statement you quote : 'In discourse with . . .' 

 On the face of it we should say that that statement appeared only in 

 the published volume of the 'Anatomy of Plants,' 1682." 



In a previous letter (October 8, 1926), from the office of the Royal 

 Society, it is stated: "All the Society did in the present case of Grew's 

 communications was to desire him 'to cause them to be printed together 

 in one volume.' " The first authentic reference, therefore, to the matter, 

 must be taken to be Grew's publication in his "Anatomy of Plants," pub- 

 lished in 1682. 



