EARLY STUDIES OF THE FLOWER 337 



SOME EARLY STUDIES OF THE FLOWER 



It must have been known from time immemorial that 

 fruits are preceded by flowers, and that when the 

 blossom is nipped no fruit is to be expected, but though 

 knowledge of the fact is ancient, knowledge of the cause 

 of the fact is as modern as the seventeenth century a.d. 

 Herodotus, in the middle of the fifth century B.C., 

 brought back from his travels the highly suggestive 

 information that the date-palm is of two sexes, and that 

 in Assyria the female tree was fertilised by dusting it 

 with the branches of the male, but this clue was not 

 followed up, partly no doubt because of the dilB&culty of 

 the inquiry, but partly because a philosophy which 

 treated general propositions as the source from which 

 particular truths are to be drawn was allowed to over- 

 ride observation. Aristotle showed how imperfectly he 

 understood the case of the date-palm by teaching that 

 in plants the male and female elements are united, so 

 that fertilisation is unnecessary. Had the date ripened 

 its fruit on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, 

 it must continually have reminded botanists that it 

 depended upon artificial fertilisation, and truer notions 

 might have come to prevail. Theophrastus was no 

 better informed than Aristotle ; he supposed that both 

 male and female dates bear fruit, and shows no real 

 knowledge of the functions of the parts of the flower, 

 not even distinguishing stamens from styles. His 

 diligence in observing and describing far exceeded his 

 acuteness in explaining, and he made no experiments. 



Pliny described the flower of the white lily as possess- 

 ing a slender pistil (pilum, or as others read, JUum) 

 and anthers {croci staminis, according to one reading), 

 which stand up in the centre ; elsewhere he notes the 



