306 SEXUALITY OF VEGETABLES. CHAP. VI. 



as the best that could be adduced, conceived that 

 the subject might be still further illustrated by 

 means of depriving the plant of its male flowers 

 altogether, or of removing the individuals of different 

 sex to a distance from one another. Accordingly 

 having selected some plants of Mercurialis, Morus, 

 Zea Mays, and Ricinus, and stripped them of their 

 stameniferous flowers, or removed the male plant to 

 a great distance from the female, he found that the 

 fruit did not now ripen ; the inference from which 

 was that the generation of plants is analogous to 

 that of animals, and that the stamens of the flowers 

 of the former correspond to the sexual organs of the 

 males of the latter.* 



But though the fact of the sexuality of vegetables 

 seemed thus unequivocally ascertained, the peculiar 

 mode of their fecundation was still left undeter- 

 mined. Some conjectures had been offered with 

 respect to it by Caesalpinus and Grew, the former 

 regarding it as being effected by means of an exhala- 

 tion from the male flower ; and the latter, by means 

 of an effluvium from the pollen : but Morland, who 

 published a paper on the subject in the Philosophi- 

 cal Transactions for 1703, in which he adopts indeed 

 the opinion of Grew with regard to the functions of 

 the stamens, contends, however, that the pollen is a 

 congeries of seminal plants, one of which at least 

 must be conveyed through the style into the ovary, 

 before it can become prolific. This conjecture 

 * L ? ,pistola de Sexu Plantarum, 1695. 





