126 
OPPONENTS OF LINNAEUS. 
self deny it*. The ancients, as Pliny recordst, had some notions 
of such a system. Besides Jung, another German of the name of 
Camerarius, Professor at Tubingen +, and Sir Thomas Milling- 
ton, Professor at Oxford, had already given some ideas of the sexes 
of plants, during the last century, nay there is even a remoter in- 
stancej. 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 no Lin n,e us 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 
* Exafte dicere, qu's primus sexum plantarum invenerit, res essei maximse difficultatis. 
Veteres cognoscebant sex us ; sed parum solida erat cognitio. Thom. Millington, circa 
annum 1676, primum veruni invcntorem hujus doft rinse fuisse dicunt ; at nihil de ea tradi- 
dit. Nemo autcm melius Vaillantio, magno illo botanico, accurate rem ostendit, quamvis 
argumentis non demonstraverit.— Linnaus in the solution of the prize question De Sexu 
plantarum. 
f Arboribus, immo potius omnibus qua terra gignat herbisque etiam utrumque sexum 
esse, naturae diiigentissimi tradunt. Plin. Hist. Natur. Lib. xiii. Cap. 4. 
t Epistola de Sexu plantarum. Tubing#, 1694, twelves. 
§ Already in the year 1592, a Polish literatus of the name of Adam Zalziawisky, 
maintained the difference of the sexes of plants. 
|| Ad an son, one of the most distinguished French opponents of Linnaeus, did him 
complete justice with regard to his sexual system, by saying ; “ Though the idea of a system 
“ founded 
