Chap, i.] Adherents and Opponents of Sexuality. 4c i 



theory, and even regarded him as its most eminent founder, 

 this arose partly from the fact that they were unable to 

 distinguish between his scholastic deductions and scientific 

 proof, and partly from that confusion of the idea of sex- 

 uality with a classification of plants founded on the sexual 

 organs, to which we have before called attention. Such a 

 confusion of ideas gave rise to the claims which Renzi as- 

 serted on behalf of Patrizi, but which Ernst Meyer, in 

 his 'Geschichte der Botanik,' iv. p. 420, has refuted on this 

 very ground. Even in our own century De Candolle has 

 been blamed by Johann Jacob Roemer for not giving Lin- 

 naeus the credit of being the actual founder of the sexual 

 theory. 



A few words in conclusion on those writers, who after 

 Camerarius' investigations still denied sexuality in plants, 

 because they knew nothing of what had been written on the 

 subject or were incapable of appreciating scientific proof. 

 Tournefort must first be mentioned on account of the great 

 authority which he enjoyed with botanists during the first 

 half of the 18th century. In his ' Institutions rei herbariae ' 

 of the year 1700 (Book I. p. 69), with which we have already 

 made acquaintance, he treats of the physiological significance 

 of the parts of the flower, apparently in entire ignorance of 

 Camerarius' researches, and at any rate with a leaning to 

 Malpighi's views. He makes the petals take up nourishment 

 from the flower-stalks, which they further digest and supply to 

 the growing fruit, while the unappropriated parts of the sap 

 pass through the filaments into the anthers and collect in the 

 loculaments, to be afterwards discharged as excreta. Tourncf< «1 

 even doubted the necessity of the pollination of the female 

 date-palm. The truth is that he was not well acquainted with 

 the facts, and was led astray by his preconceptions. The 

 same was the case with the Italian botanist Pontedera ; in his 

 ' Anthologia' of 1720 he reproduces Malpighi's unlucky notion, 

 and at the same time makes the ovary absorb the nectar for 



i)d 



