The Sex and Generative Organs of Plants. 261 



use of the seed is not indicated so much as the sexless 

 propagation by eyes, grafts, &c. In the case of those vege- 

 tables, however, which from the shortness of their lives are 

 not suited for this kind of multiplication, for instance grains, 

 flax, &c, as soon as they begin to degenerate, since we 

 cannot ennoble them, we must replace the seed by better, 

 which has been produced under more favorable external 

 circumstances. 



In the most lowly organised plants to which we do not 

 ascribe any sex, we meet with several appearances, which 

 are calculated to prove, that the tendency just indicated, 

 was inherent in their germs of reproduction ; namely, to con- 

 tinue especially the individual form of the parent-plant ; as 

 for instance in the lichens, which multiply themselves at 

 times by means of germs formed in all parts of the leaf without 

 distinction, at other times by germs which are detached from 

 small shields or apothecia, (which is a somewhat higher 

 organization.) 



In the first case, the issue retains more that form, which 

 a special formation of the leaf necessitates ; in the latter, 

 it resembles more that in which the leaf almost disappears, 

 and in which the new individual appears almost to consist 

 only of apothecia. The same relation is also very likely at 

 the bottom of the fact, that the mosses propagate their 

 varieties with greater certainty by means of their germs than 

 many other plants of higher organisation, to which we ascribe 

 more developed organs of reproduction, in fact, a sex. 



The idea that vegetables have sexes is of great antiquity. 

 We find traces of it in the oldest Greek authors, and since 

 the beginning of the 17th century, the doctrine of the sexes of 

 plants has been taught in Germany, (first by Adam Zaluzian- 

 ski at Prague, and by R. J. Camerarius at Tubingen.) Every 

 one knows that Linnaeus founded his system on the sexual- 

 ity of plants, and since his time, people have been accustom- 

 ed to recognise in the stamina of plants the male, and in the 



