39 8 History of the Sexual Theory. [BOOK in. 



says 1 , that in this address he propounded the sexuality of plants 

 most expressly and as an acknowledged fact, and that he 

 described very graphically the way in which the anthers fer- 

 tilise the pistil, into which description little that was correct 

 probably found its way, since it required Koelreuter, Sprengel, 

 and the botanists of quite modern times to clear up this 

 point. Vaillant therefore can only have the credit of an 

 eloquent description of what was then accepted. However, 

 De Candolle goes on t< say what Vaillant's discoveries were, 

 and on the following page we read that Linnaeus confirmed 

 these discoveries in the year 1736 in his 'Fundamenta Bota- 

 nica,' and made skilful use of them in the year 1735 in laying 

 the foundations of his sexual system. We have already in the 

 second chapter of the first book explained the confusion of 

 ideas which lies at the bottom of these and many similar 

 statements, and in the same chapter have sufficiently indicated 

 our opinion respecting Linnaeus' share in the establishment of 

 the doctrine of sexuality. It was the character of Linnaeus' 

 mind to attach slight value to the experimental proof of a fact, 

 even when, like that of sexuality, it could only be proved 

 by experiment; from the point of view of his scholastic 

 philosophy it was more important with him to deduce the 

 existence of this fact, in what seemed to him the philosophic 

 way, from the idea of the plant or from reason, and in doing 

 so to drag in a variety of analogies from the animal king- 

 dom ; hence he acknowledged the services rendered by Came- 

 rarius, but troubled himself little about his experiments which 

 alone could decide the question, while he undertakes himself 

 to prove the existence of sexes in plants on grounds of reason 

 and the like in his peculiar fashion. How he did this in the 

 ' Fundamenta ' and in the ' Philosophia Botanica ' has been 

 already shown. Here we will briefly notice the often-quoted 



1 See Vol. II. p. 502, of the ' Physiologie vegetale.' 



