Sect. II.] Botany. 169 



ignorant of tlio offices belonging to the several 

 parts, they remained unacquainted with the true 

 process of nature, tliough it was daily open to their 

 observation *. 



Thus this celebrated doctrine rested in apparent 

 forgetfuhiess, until I676, when Dr. Grew, a dis- 

 tinguished botanist of England, who had been long 

 employed in microscopical observations and expe- 

 riments on plants, mentioned the fact, and sug- 

 gested its importance, in a paper read before the 

 Royal Society in the month of November of that 

 year. lie expressed an opinion that the stamina 

 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 potlen pro- 

 bably emits certain mmfic effluvia^ which may pro- 

 duce impregnation. The sexual doctrine was fur- 

 ther confirmed by the observations and experiments 

 of Camerarius, in 169-5. In 1702, a small publi- 

 cation, by John Henry Burkhard, a German phy- 

 sician, appeared in the form of an " Epislle to Leib- 

 nitz ;" in which the author not only adopted the 

 idea of the sexes of plants, but also suggested tlie 

 possibility of forming an arrangement of vegetables 

 according to the difference of the parts of genera- 

 tion!. A few years afterward, two botanists of 



* SeeDatens's Origine, &c. and Piilteney's Historical and Bio. 

 graphical Sketches of Botany in England, 2 vols. 8vo. l/()0. 



t About die year 1738, when the growing fame of Linnaeus 

 made him an object of envy among some of his contemporaries, 

 professor Hcister, of Helmstadt, one of his antagonists, charged 

 him with having taken liis system, without acknowledgement, 

 from the abovementioned work of Burkhard. Linn.Tus, how- 

 ever, it appears, proved that he never saw this obscure pcrfonh- 



