316 HISTORY OF BOTANV. 



letter to VaJentini. That letter was again copied by Giiielin, 

 in liis treatise De Novo Vegetabiliiim exortu. 



At this time, during the prevaihng love for atomic expla- 

 nations, the discovery of the seminal animalcules, gave an op- 

 ]X)rtunity for their employment in accounting for the fructifi- 

 cation of plants. Samuel Moreland, Stephen Francis Geoffrey, 

 and others, maintained that the matter of the pollen penetrated 

 into the ovarium, (381.) But this account was opposed in 

 the strongest manner by Sebastian Vaillant, professor at Paris, 

 who died 17^1, in his Discours sur la Structure des Fleurs, 

 Ley den 1718, in quai'to. Vaillant also obtained distinction 

 by his disquisitions respecting many families of plants, as well 

 as by his Parisian Flora, Botanicon Parisiense, Leyden 1727> 

 in folio. 



452. 



The most accomplished predecessors of Linnaeus were Ja- 

 cob Dillenius, John Scheuchzer, and Peter Antony Micheli. 

 The first was early a professor in Giessen, afterwards super- 

 intendant of the Sherardian garden at Eltham in England, and 

 lastly professor at Oxford. He died 1 747. How little he was at- 

 tached to the systems of his time, how completely he under- 

 stood the manner of investigating the parts of fructification, 

 even of Cryptogamous plants, had been already proved by 

 his Catalogus Plantarum, Giessen 1718, in octavo. In Eng- 

 land he published the Hortus Elthamensis, London 1732, a 

 Avork which was intended to combine unexampled beauty of 

 plates, with the most minute investigations and the most care- 

 ful descriptions. But every thing which had hitherto been 

 done in this department, was surpassed by his Historia Mus- 

 corum, Oxford 1741, in quarto. 



The merits of John Scheuchzer, professor at Zurich, who 

 died 1737, are chiefly confined to an examination and arrange- 

 ment of the Grasses, which we find in his Agrostographia, 

 Zurich 1775, in quarto. 



Peter Antony Micheh, superintendant of the gardens of 

 the Grand Duke of Florence, and who died 1737, laboured in 

 I he same spirit as Dillenius, searching chiefly for the sexual 



