THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 

 No. 44. AUGUST 1861. 



IX. — On the Sexual Life of Plants, and Parthenogenesis. By Dr. 

 H. Karsten, Lecturer on Botany at the University of Berlin*. 



[Plates IX. A, X. & XL] 



The experience of past ages, that certain plants only produce 

 fruit and fertile seed when two are grown together, laid the first 

 ground for the doctrine of the sexuality of plants. The Arab 

 writers, about 900 years after Christ, first drew particular atten- 

 tion to the phenomenon, and recognized its analogy to animal 

 nature. The cultivation of the Date-palm, the Pistacio, of the 

 Carica Papaya, &c, led observers to the knowledge of the pur- 

 pose of the pollen and ovules in the development of seeds. 

 But Clusius was the first botanist who pointed out distinctly 

 that those plants of the Carica Papaya bearing stamens were 

 the male, whilst, in accordance with the prevalent popular views, 

 he called those which bore the fruit the female. 



John Bay, who first remarked the fixed constancy in the 

 number of the carpels (a fact employed at the present day, since 

 the time of Jussieu, as the basis of the natural classification of 

 the vegetable kingdom), arrived, after numerous experiments 

 and observations, at the conclusion that the anthers of male 

 plants were indispensable to the female in the production of 

 germs. 



The scientific foundation of the doctrine of the sexuality of 

 plants was further advanced by our distinguished fellow-country- 

 man, Rudolph Jacob Camerarius, Professor in Tubingen. Ca- 

 merarius supplied by his researches the groundwork for that 

 first logically-contrived system of plants which, thirty years 

 later, Linnseus gave to his contemporaries. 



* Translated by J. T. Arlidge, A.B., M.B. &c, from the original memoir 

 communicated by the Author, to whose kindness we are likewise indebted 

 for the use of the original plates. 



Ann. Sf Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. viii. 6 



