314 FUNCTIONS O? 



At the revival of learning botanists were 

 more occupied in determining the species, 

 and investigating the medical properties of 

 plants, than in studying their physiology* 

 and when after a while the subject in ques- 

 tion was started, some of them, as Morison, 

 Tournefort and Pontedera, uniformly treated 

 with great contempt the hypothesis which 

 has since been established. We shall, as we 

 proceed, advert to some of their arguments. 



About the year 1676, Sir Thomas Milling- 

 ton, Savilian Professor at Oxford, is recorded 

 to have hinted to Dr. Grew that the use of 

 the Stamens was probably to perfect and 

 fertilize the seed. Grew adopted the idea, 

 and the great Ray approved it. Several other 

 botanists either followed them, or had pre- 

 viously conceived the same opinion, among 

 which R. J. Camerarius, Professor at Tu- 

 bmen towards the end of the seventeenth 

 century, was one of the most able and ori- 

 ginal. Vaillant wrote an excellent oration on 

 the subject, which being hostile to the opi- 

 nions of Tournefort, lay in obscurity till pub- 

 lished by Boerhaave. Blair and Bradley as- 

 sented in England, and several continental 



