STAMENS AND PISTILS. 315 



botanists imbibed the same sciilimcnts. 

 Pontedera, however, at Padua, an university 

 long famous, but then on the dechnc, and 

 consequently adverse to all new inquiry and 

 information, in 17-0 published iiis ^Inthu- 

 hgia, quite on the other side of the ques- 

 tion. 



Linnseus, towards the year 1732, reviewed 

 all that had been done before him, and clearly 

 established the fact so long in dispute, in his 

 Fundamcnta and Fhilosophia Botcmica. He 

 determined the functions of the Stamens and 

 Pistils, proved these organs to be essential 

 to every plant, and thence conceived the 

 happy idea 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 shown the important difference be- 

 tween them. Propagation by ssed is the only 

 genuine reproduction of the species, and it 



