388 History of the Sexual Theory. [Book in. 



He then refers to his former communications to the Epheme- 

 rides on dioecious plants, and says that the case of the spinach 

 confirmed these results. After alluding to similar relations in 

 animals he continues, ' In the vegetable kingdom no production 

 of seeds, the most perfect gift of nature, the general means 

 for the maintenance of the species, takes place, unless the 

 anthers have prepared beforehand the young plant contained 

 in the seed (nisi praecedanei florum apices prius ipsam plantam 

 debite praeparaverint). It appears, therefore, justifiable to give 

 these apices a nobler name and to ascribe to them the signifi- 

 cance of male sexual organs, since they are the receptacles in 

 which the seed itself, that is that powder which is the most 

 subtle part of the plant, is secreted and collected, to be after- 

 wards supplied from them. It is equally evident, that the ovary 

 with its style (seminale vasculum cum sua plumula sive stilo) 

 represents the female sexual organ in the plant.' Further on he 

 assents to Aristotle's theory of the mixture of sexes in plants, 

 and adduces Swammerdam's discovery of hermaphroditism in 

 snails, which he says is the exception in animals but the rule 

 in plants. One erroneous notion which was only seen to be 

 erroneous a hundred years later by Konrad Sprengel, and not 

 finally refuted till within the last few years, was his belief that 

 hermaphrodite flowers fertilise themselves, and this by com- 

 parison with the snails he thinks is strange, though most 

 botanists till down to our own times, in spite of Koelreuter and 

 Sprengel, did not find it strange. That sexuality in plants was 

 admitted by botanists, Ray excepted, at the close of the 17 th 

 century at most in a figurative sense, but that Camerarius con- 

 ceived of it as in the animal kingdom, and sought to make this 

 conception prevail, is apparent from the strong expressions, 

 which he uses to show that in dioecious plants the distinction 

 between male and female plants is not to be understood 

 figuratively. He says that the new foetus, the young plant 

 contained in the seed, is formed inside the coat of the seed 

 after the plant has flowered, exactly as the new foetus is formed 



