THE SEXUALITY OF PLANTS 43 



small volume which may be regarded as the first British 

 Flora. The book went through several editions and was 

 for many a day the vade mecum of the naturalist on his 

 botanical excursions. 



Ray's works were well known both to the German and 

 the French botanists. Rivinus, who was the leading 

 Teutonic representative of the science, criticised Ray's 

 system adversely and, in 1690, pubhshed a scheme of 

 his own, in which the ancient division of the vegetable 

 kingdom into herbs, shrubs, and trees was replaced by a 

 classification founded on the corolla, an unfortunate 

 selection, seeing that that floral character is perhaps the 

 least reliable of all on which to base relationship. 



Tournefort, in the closing years of the seventeenth 

 century, was the leader in botanical thought in France, 

 and, in his InstihUiones rei herhariae, which appeared 

 in 1700, formulated a thoroughly artificial system, also 

 based on the corolla. It is somewhat remarkable that 

 Tournefort, although his attention was centred so closely 

 on the flower, did not appreciate as he might have done 

 the revolutionary labours of Camerarius on the sexuahty 

 of plants any more than he did the views of Grew and 

 Malpighi. Tournefort is often given the credit of having 

 estabhshed and defined plant genera, but there does not 

 appear to be much ground for this statement, seeing that 

 Bauhin had already accompHshed this eighty years 

 previously. 



The Sexuality of Plants 



It is of greater interest to notice Ray's views on the 

 sexuahty of plants. The continental historians, and 

 more especially Sachs, give the credit of the discovery 

 of sex to Camerarius who wrote on the subject in a 

 treatise called De sexu plantarum, in 1694. In justice 

 to EngUsh botanists it may be worth while rccalUng what 

 I have already told you of Grew's work. Ray in his 

 Historia of 1686 says that " our countryman Grow 



