CHAP, i.] Opponents of Sexuality, 1785-18^9. 425 



those of his master, and the worst of these is his large work 

 'Von der Sexualitat dor Pflanzen ' of 1820. He thought him- 

 self obliged to prove the doctrines of the nature-philosophy by 

 countless experiments ; but the way in which these are devised, 

 managed and described displays the extreme of dulness and 

 incapacity to form a sound judgment. The doubt which must 

 occasionally rise in the mind of the reader as to the accuracy 

 of his reports, and the remarks which have been made on this 

 point by Treviranus and Gartner, are not needed to disgust 

 him with the scientific efforts of this writer. 



It would be superfluous to give an account of the contents 

 of Henschel's book, which is interesting from the pathological 

 rather than from the historical point of view. To what an 

 extent better men than Henschel even later than 1820 lost 

 under the influence of the nature-philosophy their capacity for 

 judging such questions as we are discussing, how even in- 

 vestigators of merit thought it worth while to treat the pro- 

 ductions of Schelver and Henschel with a certain respect, is 

 shown among other works, by a collection of letters, which 

 were published by Nees von Esenbeck as a second supple- 

 ment to the 'Regensberg Flora' of 1821, and by the later 

 remarks of Goethe on the metamorphosis of plants, to be 

 found in Cotta's edition of his works in forty volumes (vol. 

 xxxvi. p. 134) under the title ' Verstaubung, Verdunstung, 

 Vertropfung.' But there were some who set themselves dis- 

 tinctly against these pernicious ideas, such as Paula Schrank 

 ('Flora,' 1822, p. 49) and C. L. Treviranus, who published in 

 1822 a full refutation of Henschel in his ' Lehre von dem 

 Geschlecht der Pflanzen in Bezug auf die neuesten Angriffe 

 erwogen.' A few stray supporters of the dying nature-philo- 

 sophy were still to be found at a later time ; among them 

 Wilbrand, Professor in Giessen, who ('Flora,' 1830, p. 585) 

 adopted the very subtle distinction that there is in plants 

 something analogous to sexuality in animals, but no real 

 sexuality. We see in the whole literature of the nature- 



