346 LINNiEUS AND THE JUSSIEUS 



pollen on the stigma, verifying the fact by 

 microscope. 



Linnaeus appears as a public advocate of the sexual 

 theory of the flower in his Fundamenta Botanica (1736). 

 Long before this Camerarius had demonstrated that the 

 anthers are necessary to the production of fertile seeds, 

 while Kay and Bradley had remarked the possible trans- 

 ference of pollen by wind and the formation of hybrids 

 by cross-fertilisation. More recently Miller, as we have 

 seen, had noticed the transference of pollen by bees. 

 All that Linnaeus was able to do was to collect more 

 instances of the same kind, to discuss the question at 

 every opportunity, and to employ the number and 

 disposition of the stamens and styles in his Sexual 

 System, whose validity turned, not upon the functions 

 of the parts of the flower, but solely upon the natural 

 ness of the resulting groups.^ 



I 



I 



THE PARTS OF THE FLOWER. 



Theophrastus, and still more distinctly the revivers of 

 botany, were led by their descriptions to discover that 

 precise language was necessary if ambiguity and verbiage 

 were to be avoided. Glossaries of technical terms appear 

 as early as the Historia Stirpium of Fuchs (1542). 

 Spigel (Isagoge in rem herbarium, 1606), Jung [Isagoge 

 phytoscopica, a posthumous work, 1679), Linnaeus 

 (Fundamenta Botanica, 1736 and Philosophia Botanica, ^M\ 

 1751) and the elder De Candolle (Theorie Elementaire '* 

 de la Botanique, 2nd. ed., 1819) each in his own genera- ^i 

 tion extended and rectified the language of botany. wt 



Flower, It would not be easy to find earlier than 



1 Sachs, History of Botany, English translation, p. 82, &c. It may be fair to 

 quote also the dififerent opinion of Axell (in Hermann Miiller's Fertilisation of 

 Flowers, Eng, trans., p. 27) that "the masterly collection of proofs of the 

 sexuality of plants given bj'^ Linnaeus " did much to settle the question. 



