Chap, i.] Adherents and Opponents of Sexuality. 395 



'Philosophical Transactions ' of 1702 and 1703, p. 141 4, he 

 names Grew as the man who had observed that the pollen 

 answers to the male semen, but he makes no allusion to 

 Camerarius' experiments, the only ones which had as yet been 

 made. He himself suggests that the young seeds may be 

 compared to unfertilised ova, while the pollen-dust (farina) 

 contains embryo plants, one of which must find its way into 

 every ovule (ovum) in order to fertilise it. If so ; the style 

 must be a tube through which the embryos pass into the ova. 

 He supposes the pollen in Fritillaria imperialis to be washed 

 by wind and rain from the stigma through the style into the 

 ovary, without reflecting that the movement must be an up- 

 ward one in the hanging flower. If I could prove, he says, 

 that embryos are never found in unfertilised seeds, this would 

 be a demonstration ; but I have never been so fortunate as to 

 settle this point. He does not mention that Camerarius had 

 shown this ten years before ; he can only give as the main 

 argument for his conjecture, that in beans the embryo lies 

 near the orifice of the seed-coat (the micropyle), which 

 shows that he was not aware that the two large bodies in 

 the seed of the bean (the cotyledons) belong to the embryo, a 

 fact which his countrymen Grew and Ray had already pointed 

 out. It appears therefore, that Morland supplied no answer to 

 the question how fertilisation takes place ; his treatise contains 

 nothing more than the assertion that the embryo is already 

 contained in the pollen-grain, and that it reaches the seed 

 through a hollow style and is there developed, an entirely 

 erroneous and not even an original idea, for it was the off- 

 spring of the theory of evolution which was at that time in 

 vogue. 



Geoffroy's communications (' Histoire de I'Acad^mie 

 royale des sciences,' Paris, 17 14, P- 210) contain a few 

 more facts. He mentions neither Grew, Camerarius, nor 

 even Morland, but connects his own observations oi 1711 on 

 the structure and purpose of the more important parts o! the 



