172 THE MINUTE ANATOMISTS 



objections, -which might oppose them" (p. 171).^ Un- 

 fortunately Grew did not seek to verify his opinion 

 by experiment. He goes on to say that as every plant 

 is both male and female (an unwarranted guess) the 

 attire must discharge other functions as well, such as 

 the separation and " affusion " of parts (probably 

 chemical change of some kind). In another passage he 

 notices what he calls the secondary use of the attire ; it 

 serves, he thinks, for ornament and for distinction 

 (of species) ; further, it provides food for "a vast 

 number of little animals" (p. 40). Elsewhere he 

 remarks that pollen-grains "are that body which bees 

 gather and carry upon their thighs, and is commonly 

 called their bread. For the wax they carry in little 

 flakes in their chaps, but the bread is a kind of powder, 

 yet somewhat moist, as are the said little particles of 

 attire" (p. 171). Swammerdam had not been able 

 to discover what bee-bread really was (see p. 192). 



The Fructification of a Fern 



The sporangium ("seed-case") of a fern is described 

 as "girded about with a sturdy tendon or spring," 

 whose surface resembles a fine screw ; "so soon as by 

 the innate air of the plant or otherwise this spring 

 is become stark enough, it suddenly breaks the case into 

 two halfs, like two little cups, and so slings the seed" 

 (p. 200). The sporangia are barely recognisable in 

 Grew's figure (PI. LXXII). Fern-sporangia had already 

 been described by WiUiam Cole of Bristol (1669). 

 Valerius Cordus {supra, p. 28) had found reason to 

 affirm that young ferns spring from the brown dust 



iRay in his Wisdom of God (1691) speaks of " the masculine or prolific seed 

 contained in the chives or apices of the stamina," but like Grew, he had no 

 clear proof for what he said. Five years earlier he had treated the question 

 as an open one (supra, p. 125). 



