39 History of the Sexual Theory. [BOOK in. 



appropriate his honours fastened, as is usual, on these failures, 

 without being able to account for the experiments which had 

 been successful. The statement of his failures is our best 

 proof of the exactness of his observations, for we now know 

 the cause of failure, which Camerarius himself observed, but 

 did not apply in explanation. We may assume that he would 

 have cleared up this point in his splendid investigations in a 

 quieter time, for at the end of his letter he laments the unjust 

 war then raging ; it was the time of the predatory campaign of 

 Louis XIV. To his letter is appended a Latin ode of twenty- 

 six stanzas by an unknown poet, probably a pupil of his own; it 

 is an epitome of the ' Epistola de sexu Plantarum,' as Goethe's 

 well-known poem contains the chief points of his doctrine of 

 metamorphosis, but it resembles Goethe's composition in no 

 other respect ; it begins 



Novi canamus regna cupidinis, 

 Novos amores, gaudia non prius 



Audita plantarum, latentes 



Igniculos, veneremque miram. 



3. DISSEMINATION OF THE NEW DOCTRINE; ITS 

 ADHERENTS AND OPPONENTS. 1700-1760. 



No part of botany has so often engaged the pen of the 

 historian, as the doctrine of sexuality in plants ; but the 

 majority of writers have not gone to the original sources for 

 their information, and the consequence has been that the 

 merits of the real founders and promoters of the doctrine have 

 often been thrown into the shade for the benefit of others; 

 even German botanists have ascribed the services of Camera- 

 rius to Frenchmen and Englishmen, because they were unac- 

 quainted with his writings, or were unable to judge of the 

 question and its solution. We shall here endeavour to show 

 from the records of the iSth century how far anyone before 

 Koelreuter really contributed anything of value to the estab- 



