FOUNDATIONS OF ANATOMY 37 



to east ; but in the trunk, contrarily, by south, from east 

 to west." In this observation he is perfectly correct. 



I must now attempt to give you some idea of Grew's 

 notions as to the structure and functions of the flower. 

 You will remember that Theophrastus in his Enquiry 

 mentions the fact that the date fruit does not mature 

 unless the dust from the male flower be shaken over it, 

 but it is doubtful if the Greek really believed that plants 

 had sex like animals. Pliny reported the existence of two 

 sexes in palms and talked of how the male palm " marries 

 with other female palms, by gently sighing, tender looks, 

 and the dispersion of a powder " ! Among the botanists 

 of the seventeenth century, however, the sexuality of 

 plants was by no means an article of general belief. 

 The English herbalist Parkinson, for instance, writes in 

 his Theatre of Plants, published in 1640, " The ancient 

 writers have set down many things of Dates that they are 

 male and female and that they both beare fruit so that they 

 be within sight one of another, or else they will not beare 

 but I pray you account this among the rest of their fables." 



Grew devotes a whole chapter to the structure of the 

 flower, but the terminology he employs will appear some- 

 what bizarre to you. The calyx is called the " empale- 

 ment," the corolla is the " foliature," and the stamens 

 and possibly the styles also, the " attire." In a paper 

 read to the Royal Society in 1676 Grew states that he had 

 discussed the question of the functions of the floral organs 

 with Sir Thomas Millington, at that time professor in 

 Oxford, who had suggested to him that " the attire doth 

 serve, as the male, for the generation of the seed," and 

 that he, Grew, agreed with that view. The nearest that 

 Grew gets to the idea of sex in flowers is his statement 

 that the pollen " falls down upon the seed case or womb " 

 and " touches it with a prolific virtue or subtle and vivific 

 effluvia." Grew had noticed the visits of insects to flowers 

 and observed how they carried away honey, wax, and 

 " particular parts of the attire," but while recognising the 



