chap. i.] From Aristotle to Camerarius. ;- ( y 



among the botanists of Germany and the Netherlands in the 



1 6th century. The idea of a male sex in such plants us 

 Abrotanum, Asphodelus, Filix, Polygonum mas et femina, was 

 founded only on difference of habit, and not on the parts 

 which are essential to it. But it should be observed that it 

 is the less learned among the older botanists, Fuchs, Mattioli, 

 Tabernaemontan, who make most frequent use of this mode 

 of designating plants ; the more learned, as Conrad Gesner, 

 de l'Ecluse, J. Bauhin employ it only in the case of a plant 

 already known. De l'Ecluse it is true in describing the plants 

 which he found often notes the form, colour, and even the 

 number of the stamens ; in Carica Papaya he calls the in- 

 dividual with stamens the male, and the one with carpels 

 the female, since he holds them to belong to different sexes, 

 though of the same species ; but he is satisfied with saying, 

 that it is affirmed that the two are so far connected, that the 

 female produces no fruit if the male is separated from it by 

 any great distance (' Curae posteriores,' 42). 



The case of the botanists above-mentioned is simply one of 

 ignorance; in the botanical philosopher Cesalpino on the 

 contrary we see a consequence of the Aristotelian system, 

 which leads him distinctly to reject the hypothesis of separate 

 sexual organs in plants as opposed to their nature. It is diffi- 

 cult to understand how De Candolle, at page 48 of his 

 1 Physiologie vegetale,' can say that Cesalpino recognised the 

 presence of sexes in plants. His conception of vegetable 

 seed-grains as analogous to the male seed in animals must 

 have made it impossible for him to understand sexuality in 

 plants. So too his notion that the seed is derived from the 

 pith as the principle of life in plants, in connection with which 

 he says at page 11 of the first of his sixteen books; 'Nun 

 fuit autem necesse in plantis genituram aliquam distinetain 

 a materia secerni, ut in animalibus, quae mari et femina 

 distinguuntur.' He regarded the parts of the flower which 

 surround the ovary, or are separate from it, together with 



