riii. . PREFACE. 



The honor of having first suggested the true sex- 

 ual distinctions in plants appears to be due to our 

 own countryman, Sir Thomas Milington ; from 

 whose hints Dr. Grew, as the Doctor himself ac- 

 knowledges, was led to the observations he has given 

 on this subject, in his Anatomy of plants * . After 

 this, Camerarius, Moreland, Geoffroy, Vaillant, Blair, 

 Jussieu, and Bradley, pursued their enquiries and ex- 

 periments so far as to remove all doubt concerning 

 these discoveries ; and lastly, Dr. Linnaeus founded 

 thereon the System of Botany which we are going to 

 explain in this Work. 



The Sexual Hypothesis, on its first appearance, 

 was recieved with all that caution that becomes an 

 enlightened age ; and nature was traced experimen- 

 tally through all her variations, before it was univer- 

 sally assented to. Tournefort refused to give it any 

 place in his system ; and Pontedera, though he had 

 examined it, treated it as chimerical ; but the proofs 

 which Dr. Linnaeus has stated among the aphorisms 

 of his Fundainenta Botanica f , and farther explained 

 and illustrated in his Philosophia Botanica J, are so 

 clear, that the birth of animals is not more evidently 

 the 3 consequence of an intercourse between the sexes 

 than that of vegetables; and it would be now as ridi- 

 culous for any one, who has looked at the arguments, 

 to doubt the one as the other. 



We 



* Published in the year 1682.. The Doctor expresses him- 

 self thus : " In discourse hereof with our learned Saviliaa 

 " professor, Sir Thomas Millington, he told me, he conceived 

 " that the attire doth serve as the male for the generation of 

 " the seed. I immediately replied that I was of the same 

 " opinion, and gave 4 him some reasons for it, and answered 

 " some objections which might oppose them, &c. Anat. of 

 Plants, p. 171. 



f Aphorism 132 to 150. 

 't Page SM to 



