Natural History. 1 3 3 



Thus this celebrated doctrine rested in apparent 

 forgetfulness, until 1676, when Dr. Grew, a dis- 

 tinguished botanist of England, who had been 

 long employed in microscopical observations and 

 experiments on plants, mentioned the fact, anc} 

 suggested its importance, in a paper read before 

 the Royal Society in the month of November of 

 that year. He expressed an opinion that the sta- 

 mina and styli of vegetables are analogous to the 

 organs of generation in animals, and adapted by 

 nature to answer the same purpose; and that the 

 pollen probably emits certain viv?fic effluviay which 

 may produce impregnation. The sexual doctrine 

 was further confirmed by the observations and ex- 

 periments of Camerarius, in 1695. In 1702, a 

 small publication, by John Henry Btjrkhard, a 

 German physician, appeared in the form of an 

 " Epistle to Leibnitz;" in which the author not 

 only adopted the idea of the sexes of plants, but 

 also suggested the possibility of forming an ar- 

 rangement of vegetables according to the difference 

 of the parts of generation." A few years afterward, 

 two botanists of France, Geoffroy, in 1711, and 

 Vaillant, in 1718, declared themselves in favour 

 of Grew's opinion; while Toufnefort and his 

 friends opposed it with equal warmth.^ In Great- 



! About ihe year 1738, when the growing fame of Linn^us made him 

 j ?n object of envy among some of his contemporaries, Professor Hejster, 

 \ of Heknstadt, one of his antagonists, charged him with having taken his 

 j system, without acknowledgment, from the above mentioned work of 

 ;t BuRKHARD. LiNN^us, however, it appears, proved that he never saw 

 1 1 this obscure performance; and even if he had, his friends contended, that 

 ij it would have detracted Httle from his merit, that another had slightly sug' 

 1 1 ^fi/<r^ a plan which he so ably executed. See Stoever's Life of Linnaus^ 

 (j translated by Trapp. 4to. 1794. — Professor Barton lately informed me, 

 il that he had seen a copy of Burkhard's publication, in the Loganlan Li- 

 A brary, at Philadelphia, and that he considered the sexual doctrine as the 

 i I foundation of botanical arrangement, as very distinctly suggested by the 

 : j author. 



' p It is remarkable that the beautiful Latin Poem of M. De la Crotx, 

 . j entitled dnnubia florum^ of which the sexuul doctrine forms the founda- 



