384 History of the Sexual Theory. [Book hi. 



If now we ask ourselves, what it really was that was gained 

 from Millington and Grew, we find that it was simply the 

 conjecture, that the anthers produce the male element in 

 fertilisation, and that this view was closely connected in their 

 minds with the strangest chemical theories and analogies from 

 animal life. It is remarkable by what indirect ways science 

 sometimes advances. If Grew had only been prepared to 

 assume some kind of sexuality in plants, he need only have 

 taken up Theophrastus' statement, that the anther-dust of the 

 male palm is shaken over the female to produce fertilisation ; 

 and since both Grew and Malpighi observed the pollen in the 

 anthers, they might at once and in reliance on this experiment 

 of a thousand years before have come to the conclusion that 

 the stamens are the male organs. But Grew never mentions 

 the ancient views and experiences. Like other writers before 

 Camerarius, he made no attempt to answer the question by 

 experiment. It was a step in advance, when Ray in his 

 'Historia Plantarum ' (1693), I- ca P- IO > P- I 7; H- P- I2 5°> 

 threw some light on the very obscure train of thought in 

 Grew's mind, and did something to put it on the right track, 

 by referring to the case of dioecious plants and to the old 

 experience of the date-palm, but he too made no attempt to 

 settle the question by experiment. The true discoverer of 

 sexuality in plants, Camerarius, was however engaged in the 

 experimental solution of the problem two years before the 

 appearance of Ray's ' Historia Plantarum.' Ray's remarks on 

 the subject in the preface to his 'Sylloge Stirpium' (1694) are 

 only assertion founded on no experiments. But if any are 

 prepared to attribute greater value to the utterances of Grew 

 and Ray, the comparison of them with the way in which 

 Camerarius addressed himself to the question will show at 

 once, that it was he who so far advanced the theory of the 

 subject as to make it accessible to experimental treatment, as 

 he undoubtedly was the first who not only undertook experi- 

 ments on the subject but carried them out with the skill which 



