Chap, i.] From Aristotle to Camerarius, 



and adjust the gaseous, in order that the seed may become 

 more oily and its principles be better fixed. Here we find 

 ourselves on the ground of the chemistry of the day, in which 

 sulphur, salt, and oil play the chief parts. Consequently, con- 

 tinues Grew, the flower has usually a stronger smell than the 

 attire, because the saline sulphur is stronger than the gaseous, 

 which is too subtle to affect the sense. Closely adhering to 

 Malpighi's view he goes on to compare these processes in 

 the flower with processes in the ovary of animals, inasmuch 

 as they qualify, the sap in the ovary for the approaching 

 formation of seed, and he says that as the young and early 

 attire before it opens contains the superfluous part of the 

 female organ, so after it is opened it probably performs the 

 office of the male. But how confused his ideas still were i >n 

 this point may be further seen by examination of the passage 

 which follows in his book (page 172, section 7), where, speak- 

 ing of the single flowers in the head of the Compositae, he 

 regards the blade, that is the style and stigma, of the floral 

 attire as a portion of a male organ, and the globulets (pollen- 

 grains) and other small particles upon the blade and in the 

 thecae (anthers) of the seed-like attire as a vegetable sperm, 

 which subsequently when the parts are duly matured falls 

 down upon the seed-case and so touches it with a prolific 

 virtue. 



He meets the objection, that the same plant must con- 

 sequently be both male and female, with the feet, that snails 

 and other animals are similarly constituted. That the pollen- 

 grains communicate a prolific virtue to the ovary (uterus) or to 

 its juices by simply falling upon it, he thinks is rendered 

 probable by comparing this with the process of fertilisation in 

 many animals, and here Grew has some curious remarks. 

 The section closes with the observation that to expect com 

 plete similarity in this matter between plants and animals, is 

 to require that the plant should not only resemble an animal. 

 but should actually be one. 



