EARLY STUDIES OF THE FLOWER 339 



profit by the strong suggestion of a conclusive experi- 

 ment which his own words conveyed. 



Some nine years after the appearance of Grew's 

 Anatomy of Plants one man struck the right path, and 

 proved experimentally what Millington and Grew had 

 divined, but failed to establish, viz., that the anthers 

 are the male organs of the flowering plant. Rudolph 

 Jacob Camerarius, professor of botany at Tubingen, was 

 led to attend to the sexes of flowering plants by noticing 

 that a female mulberry-tree, growing at a distance from 

 males, on one occasion bore fruit, though the fruit only 

 contained abortive seeds. This led him to experiment 

 on another plant with separated sexes, the annual mer- 

 cury. Two female plants, when isolated, produced only 

 abortive seeds. ^ 



Fuller and more connected experiments are given in 

 a letter De Sexu Plantarum, published in 1694.^ 



In the seventeenth century an important scientific 

 communication, dealing with a question of long stand- 

 ing, was expected to traverse the learning of the topic, 

 and so large a part of the Epistola of Camerarius is 

 occupied by the views of ancient writers on generation 

 that it takes an hour or so to discover the truly signi- 

 cative passages. One is here quoted, which of itself 

 suffices ; others are given in Sachs' History (Bk. Ill, 

 ch. i). 



"Two examples," says Camerarius, "show how serious 

 are the effects of removing the anthers. When I pulled 

 off the first clusters of [male] Eicinus-flowers, while the 

 anthers were still unexpanded, being careful to prevent 

 the growth of fresh ones, and to leave entire the rudi- 



^Ephem. Leopold. Carol. Acad., 1691. 



'Reprinted by Mikan in E. J. Camerarii Opuscula Botanici Argumenti, 

 8vo. Prag. 1797. The Linnean Society possesses a, copy of the original 

 edition, which once belonged to Linnaeus, and is annotated by him. 



