ORGANS OF REPRODUCTION. 



57 



After a long blank in the annals of botanical 

 research, the next traces, of inquiry relative to 

 the sexuality of vegetables, are sucli as occur in 

 the works of Pliny, Dioscorides, and Galen, who 

 also adopted the division by which plants were 

 then distributed into male and female, but chiefly 

 upon the erroneous principle of habit or aspect, 

 and without any reference to a distinction ab- 

 solutely sexual ; the fertile plant being sometimes 

 denominated the male, and the barren plant the 

 female, as in the example of male and female 

 mercury, in which the true notion of vegetable 

 sexuality was altogether reversed. Pliny seems, 

 however, to admit the distinction of sex in all 

 plants whatsoever, and quotes the case of the palm 

 tree as exhibiting the most striking example. 

 Cesalpinus, who follows next in order, though 

 not till after an interval of many centuries, enters 

 more into the detail of the doctrine, and speaks 

 with more confidence on the subject than any 

 preceding botanist. Trees which produce fruit 

 only, he denominates females, and trees of the 

 same kind which are barren, he calls males, 

 adding that the fi-uit is found to be more abun- 

 dant, and of a better quality, when its males 

 grow in the neighbourhood of the females, which 

 is, as he says, occasioned by certain exhalations 

 from the males dispersing themselves all over 

 the females, and by an operation not to be ex- 

 plained, disposing them to produce more perfect 

 seed. Still, it seems doubtful whether any con- 

 jecture had been yet formed with regard to the 

 peculiar and appropriate organs by which the 

 sexual intercourse is conducted. 



Zeluzianski, a native of Poland, who lived 

 about the end of the sixteenth century, is said 

 to have made some considerable discoveries re- 

 garding the sexuality of vegetables. But as his 

 book, if he ever published one, is not now to be 

 met with, no one seems able to say what his 

 discoveries were, if rather, they are not a trans- 

 cript of the discoveries of Cesalpinus. At last, 

 liowever, about the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, when the improved philosophy of Bacon 

 had begim to be adopted even in Botany, and its 

 cultivation to be directed by observation and 

 experiment, rather than by conjecture ; the 

 doctrine of the sexes of plants began also to as- 

 sume a more fixed and determinate character, 

 and to exhibit the legitimate evidence of being 

 founded on fact. Still, it is difficult to say who 

 first discovered and pointed out the peculiar organs 

 by which the sexes are respectively characterised; 

 not that these organs had been overlooked in the 

 description of the flower, but that their functions 

 had been misunderstood. Malpighi, who des- 

 cribes not only the stamens and anthers, but also 

 the pollen contained in them, regards the former 

 as excretory organs contributing to the perfection 

 of the seed, and the latter as the substance ex- 

 creted. The true use of the pollen, therefore, 



was not yet discovered. The merit of sugges- 

 ting its true use seems to be between Sir T. 

 Millington, professor at Oxford, and the cele- 

 brated Dr Grew, who represents the suggestion 

 as originating with the professor, and consisting 

 in the expression of an opinion that the stamens 

 serve as the male organs of the vegetable for the 

 purpose of the generation of the seed, which 

 opinion he seems himself to have previously 

 entertained, or at the least, to have acquiesced 

 in as soon as it was suggested. This we may 

 regard as the first glimpse that was ever caught 

 of the true and proper ust of the stamens ; and 

 the discovery may be dated about the year 1676. 

 But the opinion, if not first suggested, was at 

 least first published by Dr Grew, in Iiis Anatomy 

 of Plants, together with the grounds on which 

 he had adopted it, and the illustrations which 

 its novelty demanded, or his researches had fur- 

 nished ; so that he does not merely ascribe a pe- 

 culiar function to the stamens, but points out 

 also the mode in which he thinks that function 

 is discharged, and which is represented to be as 

 follows. When the summits of the stamens or 

 anthers surmounting the filaments burst open 

 in the process of vegetation, the inclosed pollen 

 falls upon the pistil and impregnates the embryo, 

 not by actually entei'ing the pistil, but by means 

 of a subtile and vivic effluvium ; hence the sta- 

 mens are the male, and the pistils the female 

 organs of vegetable impregnation. This was 

 the very discovery that furnished the clue for 

 the unravelling of the whole of the mystery 

 overhanging the subject, because it is equally 

 applicable to all sorts of vegetables whatever; 

 whether producing the organs in question in 

 separate flowers, and on separate plants, as in 

 the case of the palm tree ; or in separate flowers, 

 and on the same plant, as on the hazel ; or lastly, 

 in the same flower, as in the lily, which last is 

 by far the most general mode of vegetable sexu- 

 ality. The opinion of Grew was adopted also 

 by Ray at first with some appearances of doubt, 

 but finally without any sort of reservation, as 

 being founded on evidence which appeared to 

 him sufficiently convincing, and which he was 

 even induced to illustrate. Hitherto the doctrine 

 of the sexuality of vegetables had been sup- 

 ported chiefly upon the ground of its probability, 

 as arising from careful observation, or upon that 

 of the necessity of the case, and had not yet 

 been confirmed by the evidence of actual ex- 

 periment; but this confirmation, which was so 

 devoutly to be wished, and without which all 

 other arguments must have remained insufficient, 

 was at length also happily undertaken. The 

 first example of experiment recorded on this 

 subject is that of Camerarius, who, having 

 adopted the opinions of Grew and Ray, though, 

 perhaps, without regarding their arguments as 

 the best that could be adduced, conceived that 



