1856.] Vegetable Reproduction^ etc. 259 



of each race, male and female individuals are indispensably necessary. 

 And speaking of male and female plants, we might well suppose that 

 the vegetable kingdom is to be governed by the same or a'similar law. 

 And, in truth, various strong indications present themselves in support 

 of this presumption. In the greater varieties of plants, two organs, or 

 instrumentalities, are requisite for the production of a seed capable of 

 germination. Those organs, the stamen with the pollen, and the germen 

 with the pistillum, are diflPerently located on different kinds of plants ; 

 and this may be assigned as the reason why some flowers, isolated from 

 others of their kind, are unable to produce fruit and seed. This fact, 

 as such, was recognised and understood in very early periods of civiliza- 

 tion, and was employed in a practical way to procure the desired crop 

 of fruit on certain plants. Thus, both Pliny and Theophrastus tell us 

 that the country people who were engaged in the culture of dates " hung 

 up flowering branches of one tree among the flowers of others of the 

 seed-bearing forms, and thus caused the development of seed and fruit." 

 And here we are compelled to pause for a moment, and wonder how this 

 simple and old-fashioned truth, with this scientific record of antiquity 

 continually open before us, could have been for ages ignored and forgot- 

 ten among the horticulturists of America, till a friendly billow of the 

 ocean bore to the shores of this great continent a simple-hearted and 

 unlettered German woman, whose mission it seems to have been to remove 

 this candle from under the bushel, and by its old light to teach the new 

 world the great secret of successful strawberry culture ! If this alleged 

 fact rests upon historic truth, it presents, at least, one important instance 

 wherein foreign immigration has. proved profitable to America ! 



But leaving this distinguished benefactress of mankind " alone in her 

 glory," let us continue our chronological examination of the doctrines 

 and dicta of the science of Botany touching the matter under present 

 consideration. And herein we find that in the most remote times, when 

 the human intellect was first awakened to the importance, grandeur and 

 scientific beauty of the vegetable world, the first rudimcntal elements 

 of a subsequently wide-extended science were in danger of being lost in 

 a planless seeking for extension. An endless diversity and variety of 

 forms, habits, and laws, were then recognised in the plants that adorn 

 earth's surface ; no system was yet established to comprehend the whole 

 race of vegetables under strict and uniform distinctions. Soon Linnaeus 

 arose and proffered to this confused period a system by which to not only 

 comprehend with one glance the endless varieties and extent of the 

 vegetable kingdom, but he also laid down in his " Philosophia Botan- 

 ica,'" the true fundamental laws that govern the production and repro- 



