STAMENS AND PISTILS. 315 



botanists imbibed the same sentiments. 

 Pontedera, however, at Padua, an university 

 long famous, but then on the decline, and 

 consequently adverse to all new inquiry and 

 information, in 1720 published his Antho- 

 logia, quite on the ether side of the ques- 

 tion. 



Linnaeus, towards the year 1732, reviewed 

 all that had been done before him, and clearly 

 established the fact so long in dispute; in his 

 Fundamenta and Philosopkia Botanica. He 

 determined the functions of the Stamens and 

 Pistils, proved these organs to be essential 

 to every plant, and thence conceived the 

 happy kfea of using them for the purpose of 

 systematical arrangement. In the latter point 

 his merit was altogether original : in the former 

 he made use of the discoveries and remarks 

 of others, but set them in so new and clear 

 a light, as in a manner to render them his 

 own. 



We have already mentioned, p. 138, the 

 two modes by which plants are multiplied, 

 and have shewn the important difference be- 

 tween them. Propagation by seed is the only 

 genuine reproduction of the species, and it 



