108 OUR COMMON TETJITS. 



very early noticed; that the former became barren if 

 " widowed" by the removal of the latter is distinctly men- 

 tioned by Pliny ; and the Arabs had not only learned ex- 

 actly that it was in the formation of the blossoms that the 

 difference lay, a discovery far beyond that of the ancient 

 writers, but had acted on this knowledge in their fecun- 

 dating process for centuries before botanists had gained 

 equal insight into the physiology of plants, and while 

 what is now an elementary principle of science was gene- 

 rally looked on as but the dream of poetry. Pontanus, an 

 Italian poet of the 15th century, embodied in glowing 

 verse the loves of two palm-trees growing in his time ; 

 whereof the one, planted in the wood of Otranto, never 

 bore fruit until it grew, Calypso-like, so to overlook the 

 neighbouring trees that it could gain a view of the other 

 tree at Brindisi, 15 leagues distant, when one quickening 

 glance sufficed to make it burst forth into abundant fruit- 

 age an illustration of the " Sentiment of Flowers" now 

 coolly prosified by the scientific assertion thab it had 

 simply grown tall enough to catch the Brindisi pollen 

 borne upon the breeze. Linnaeus mentions another in- 

 stance of a palm, at Berlin, which had flowered for many 

 years, but never perfected fruit until some blossoms sent 

 by post, from a stameniferous tree flowering at the same 

 time at Leipsic, were applied to it, when fruit was at 

 once matured, and a specimen of the offspring, raised 

 from the seed thus obtained, was then flourishing in Lin- 

 nseus's own garden. The Swedish botanist, Hasselquist, 

 when travelling in 1749, was so anxious for further infor- 

 mation upon this subject, that his first question on reach- 

 ing Smyrna was concerning the nature and the habits of 

 a plant which, as he expressed it, " botanists do not yet 

 know ;" but his desire to be shown the distinction between 

 the trees and the mode of inducing fructification was 

 thwarted by the perversity of his interpreter. On arriving 

 next year in Alexandria, he wrote to Linnaeus that the first 

 thing he had done there had been to visit the date-palms 

 which form the principal ornament and principal wealth 

 of the country, and to make inquiries respecting them. 

 The Arab gardener to whom he applied waa astonished 



