304 SEXUALITY OF VEGETABLES. CHAP. VI. 



organs of the vegetable for the purpose of the 

 generation of the seed ; which opinion he seems 

 himself to have previously entertained, or at the 

 least to have acquiesced in as soon as it was sug- 

 gested.* This we may regard as the first glimpse 

 that was ever caught of the true and proper use of 

 the stamens, and may date at ahout the year 1676. 

 Published. But the opinion, if not first suggested, was at 

 least first published by Dr. Grew, in his Anatomy of 

 Plants, together with the grounds on which he had 

 adopted it, and the illustrations which its novelty 

 demanded or his researches had furnished ; so that 

 he does not merely ascribe a peculiar function to the 

 stamens, but points out also the mode in which he 

 thinks that function is discharged, and which is re- 

 presented to be as follows : When the summits of 

 the stamens, or anthers surmounting the filaments, 

 burst open in the process of vegetation, the inclosed 

 pollen falls upon the pistil and impregnates the 

 embryo ; not by actually entering the pistil, but by 

 J means of a subtle and vivific effluvium : hence the 

 stamens are the male, and the pistil or pistils the 

 female organs of vegetable impregnation. But this 

 was the very discovery that furnished the clue for 



* Our learned Savilian Professor Sir T. Millington told me 

 that he conceived the attire (stamens) doth serve as the male for 

 the generation of the seed. J immediately replied that I was of 

 the same opinion, gave him some reasons for it, and answered 

 some objections which might oppose them. Grtw's Anat. b. iv. 

 chap. 5. 



