126 



OPPONENTS OF LINN^US. 



self deny it*. The ancients, as Pliny records t, had some notions 

 of such a system. Besides Jung, another German of the name of 

 Camerarius, Professor at Tubingew^., and Sir Thomas Milling- 

 ton, Professor at C^^c/bri, had already given some ideas of the sexes 

 of plants, during the last century, nay there is even a remoter in- 

 stance^. Sir Thomas Millington's observations had been commu- 

 nicated to Dr. Grew, but they were never printed. 



Vaillant displayed these ideas with more ingenuity than all his 

 predecessors. But what difference is there between publishing a mere 

 thought — and forming, completing, and rendering it the leading 

 star of an universal reformation. Had this been accomplished by 

 Jung, Camerarius, or Sir Thomas Millington, their names 

 would have shone in perpetual lustre, and po Linnaeus would then 

 have been wanted. But it was he that really entered that immortal 

 career, which was only pointed at in distant obsurity; it was he that 

 took upon himself with infinite pains, the numberless observations 

 which became necessary to attain the proposed end ||. 



He 



* Exafle dicere, quis primus sexum plantarum invenerit, res esisel maKimae difficuhatis. 

 Veteres cognoscebant sexus; sed parum solida erat cognitio. Thom. Millington, circa 

 annum 1676, primum verum inventorem hujus do£trinae fuisse dicunt ; at nihil de ea tradi- 

 dit. Nemo autem melius Vaillantio, magno illo botanico, accurate rem ostendit, quamvis 

 argumentis non demonstraverit. — Linnaeus in the solution of the prize question De Sexu 

 plantarum. 



f Arboribus, immo potius omnibus quae terra gignat herbisque etiam utrumque sexum 

 esse, naturae diligentissimi tradunt. Plin. Hist. Natur. Lib. xiii. Cap. 4. 

 J Epistola de Sexu plantarum. lubingie, 1694, twelves. 



^ Already in the year 1592, a Polish literatus of the name of Adam Zalziawisky, 

 maintained the difference of the sexes of plants. 



II AuANSON, one of the most distinguished French opponents of Linn^us, did him 

 complete justice with regard to his sexual system, by saying : «' Though the idea of a system 



" founded 



