30 



This was not because there were no men willing to devote their time to 

 natural history, but chiefly because of the attitude of mind which de- 

 manded that problems arising be not solved by observation and experi- 

 ment, but by the process of deductions from the authorities. The ques- 

 tion was not, what do the observed facts toacli? Init. how are they to be 

 interpreted from what Aristotle says? 



The improvement of the microscojie and the extensive studies on the 

 minute anatomy of plants did not bring the results that might have been 

 reasonably expected. In spite of his excellent work on the anatomy of 

 plants, Grew seemed to have been unable to gain any true insight into the 

 structure and function of pollen. He did not even consider the stamens as 

 the so-called male members of the Uower, spealcing of them only as the 

 attire, but he records a conversation with an otherwise unknown botanist. 

 Sir Thomas Millington. who was probably the first person to claim for the 

 stamens the character of male organs. I quote from the "Anatomy of 

 Plants" (chap. V, sees. 3 and 4. page 171) : "In discourse hereof with our 

 learned Saviliau professor, Sir Thomas Millington. he told me he conceived 

 that the attire doth .serve as the male for the generation of the seed. I 

 immediately replied that 1 was of the same opinion and gave him some rea- 

 sons for it and answered some objections which might oppose them." But 

 how badly Grew must have been confused in the matter may be seen from 

 h'.s description of the florets in the head of certain Composit;«. He re- 

 garded the style and stigma of the floral attire as a portion of the male 

 organ, speaking of the small globulets (pollen grains) in the thecae (an- 

 thers) of the seedlike attire as a vegetable sperm which falls upon the seed 

 case and so "touches it with a prolific virtue." Grew could conceive of sex 

 in plants only in the form of certain apparent analogies with animals. He 

 reasoned that the same plant may be both male and female, because .snails 

 and some other animals are so constituted, but to complete the similarity 

 between the plant and the animal would require that the plant should not 

 only resemble the animal, but should actually be one. Down to the year 

 1091. about all that was known concerning the sexuality in plants was com- 

 piised in the facts related by Theophrastus for the date-palm and the tere- 

 binth, and in the conjectures of Millington, Grew and others, while Mal- 

 pighi's views in opposition to these authors were considered equally well 

 founded. 



The doctrine of sexuality in plants could only be raised to the rank 

 of scientific fact by experiment. It was necessary to show that no seed 



