t 



SECT. II. REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS. 215 



minute and scrupulous investigation of the several 

 parts and appearances of individual subjects during 

 their several stages of growth, with a view to the 

 discovery of sexual organs. Perhaps the first hint 

 leading to a correct view of the subject was that 

 given by Dillenius in his Appendix to his Catalogue 

 >f Plants growing in the neighbourhood of Gisse,* 

 in which he regards the Mosses as being indeed 

 without seed, but furnished with little heads con- 

 taining a powder, by which the terminating leaves 

 were rendered capable of germination. 



But Micheli, inspector of the botanic garden at Their 

 Florence, seems to have been the first of all modern Jon de"" 



botanists who obtained a complete view of the fruc- 

 tification of the Mosses, as consisting of a sexual 

 apparatus, which he not only describes-}- but figures; 

 though he appears to have been at the same time 

 wholly ignorant of the respective functions of the 

 organs he was describing, having mistaken the bar- 

 ren for the fertile flower ; as well as perhaps alto- 

 gether unacquainted with the true and legitimate 

 doctrine of the sexes of plants. 



Dillenius who again resumed the subject in his And illus- 

 Historia Muscorum, published at Oxford in 1741, 

 a work that still stands unrivalled in this most 

 difficult department of vegetable research, though 

 he describes the flowers of the Mosses with great 

 accuracy, and also with a view to sex, discriminat- 

 ing the barren from the fertile flower, as being 

 * Giessa?, 1719- 8vo. t Nova. Plant. Gener. p. 108, 1729- 



