If now we ask ourselves, what it really was that was gained
from Millington and Grew, we find that it was simply the
conjecture, that the anthers produce the male element in
fertilisation, and that this view was closely connected in their
minds with the strangest chemical theories and analogies from
animal life. It is remarkable by what indirect ways science
sometimes advances. If Grew had only been prepared to
assume some kind of sexuality in plants, he need only have
taken up Theophrastus' statement, that the anther-dust of the
male palm is shaken over the female to produce fertilisation; and since both Grew and Malpighi observed the pollen in the
anthers, they might at once and in reliance on this experiment
of a thousand years before have come to the conclusion that
the stamens are the male organs. But Grew never mentions
the ancient views and experiences. Like other writers before
Camerarius, he made no attempt to answer the question by experiment. It was a step in advance, when Ray in his 'Historia Plantarum' (1693), I. cap. 10, p. 17; II. p. 1250, threw some light on the very obscure train of thought in Grew's mind, and did something to put it on the right track,
by referring to the case of dioecious plants and to the old experience of the date-palm, but he too made no attempt to
settle the question by experiment. The true discoverer of
sexuality in plants, Camerarius, was however engaged in the
experimental solution of the problem two years before the
appearance of Ray's 'Historia Plantarum.' Ray's remarks on the subject in the preface to his 'Sylloge Stirpium' (1694) are only assertion founded on no experiments. But if any are
prepared to attribute greater value to the utterances of Grew
and Ray, the comparison of them with the way in which
Camerarius addressed himself to the question will show at
once, that it was he who so far advanced the theory of the
subject as to make it accessible to experimental treatment, as
he undoubtedly was the first who not only undertook experiments on the subject but carried them out with the skill which
Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/404
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384
History of the Sexual Theory.
[BOOK III.