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CHAPTER VI. 
FERTILISATION. HYBRID PLANTS. 
Having already, in the last chapter, explained the separate 
action of the stamens and pistils, I shall now confine myself 
to the consideration of their physical effect upon each other. 
The duty of the stamens is to produce the matter called 
pollen, which has the power of fertilising the pistil through 
its stigma. The stamens are, therefore, the representatives in 
plants of the male sex, the pistil of the female sex. 
The old philosophers, in tracing analogies between plants and 
animals, w^ere led to attribute sexes to the former, chiefly in 
consequence of the practice among their countrymen of 
artificially fertilising the female flowers of the date with 
those which they considered male, and also from the existence 
of a similar custom with regard to figs. This opinion, 
however, was not accompanied by any distinct idea of the 
respective functions of particular organs, as is evident from 
their confounding causes so essentially different as fertilisation 
and caprification ; nor was it generally applied, although Pliny, 
when he said that " all trees and herbs are furnished with 
both sexes," may seem to contradict this statement; at least, 
he pointed out no particular organ in which they resided. 
Nor does it appear that more distinct evidence existed of the 
universal sexuality of vegetables till about the year 1676, 
when it was for the first time clearly pointed out by Sir 
Thomas Millington and Grew. Claims are, indeed, laid to 
a priority of discovery over the latter observer by Caesalpinus, 
Malpighi, and others ; but there is nothing so precise in their 
works as we find in the declaration of Grew, " that the attire 
(meaning stamens) do serve as the male for the generation of 
the seed." It would not be consistent with the plan of this 
work to enter into any detailed account of the gradual 
advances which such opinions made in the world, nor to 
