CHAP, i.] Joseph G. Koelreuter and Konrad Sprengel. 407 



the first who investigated the question scientifically and 

 thoroughly. He was the first moreover who recognised all its 

 importance, and he applied himself to it with such admirable 

 and unexampled perseverance and judgment, that the results 

 which he obtained are still the best and most instructive, 

 though a thousand similar experiments have been made 

 since his time. He also made the first careful study of the 

 different arrangements inside the flower in their connection 

 with the sexual relation, discovered the purpose of the nectar 

 and the co-operation of insects in pollination, and proposed that 

 view of the sexual act, which with some considerable modifica- 

 tion we must still in the main consider to be the true one, 

 namely, that it is a mingling together of two different sub- 

 stances. 



If we compare Koelreuter's writings, which are full of matter 

 in a small compass, with all that was produced after Camerarius, 

 we are astonished not only at the abundance of new thoughts, 

 but still more at their wonderful clearness and perspicuity, and 

 the sureness of the foundation laid for them in observation and 

 experiment. In reading the observations of Linnaeus, Gleichen, 

 and Wolff on the sexual theory we step into a world of thought 

 which has long been strange and is scarcely intelligible to us, 

 and which in the present day possesses only a historical 

 interest. Koelreuter's works on the contrary seem to belong 

 to our own time ; they contain the best knowledge which we 

 possess on the question of sexuality, and have not become 

 antiquated after the lapse of more than a hundred years. We 

 see by his example that one really gifted thinker with the 

 requisite perseverance will effect more in a few years, than 



' Ueber Bastard zeugung ' of 1849, at p. 5 says that after the latter date Koel- 

 reuter occupied himself with experiments in alchemy ; but this must be a 

 mistake. Gartner, loco cit., and the ' Flora' of 1839, p. 245, supply all that 

 seems to be known of the life of this distinguished man. The ' Biographic 

 Universelle' contains no account of him. It would appear that he was 

 in St. Petersburg before 1766. 



