THE ANNALS MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. [THIRD SERIES.] No. 44. AUGUST 1861. I X. — O71 the Sexual Life of Plants, and Parthenogenesis. By Dr. H. Karsten, Lecturer on Botany at the University of Berlin*. [Plates IX. A, X. & XI.] The experience of past ages, that certain plants only produce fruit and fertile seed when two are grown together, laid the first ground for the doctrine of the sexuality of plants. The Arab writers, about 900 years after Christ, first drew particular atten-tion to the phenomenon, and recognized its analogy to animal nature. The cultivation of the Date-palm, the Pistacio, of the Carica Papaya, &c., led observers to the knowledge of the pur-pose of the pollen and ovules in the development of seeds. But Clusius was the first botanist who pointed out distinctly that those plants of the Carica Papaya bearing stamens were the male, whilst, in accordance with the prevalent popular views, he called those which bore the fruit the female. John Ray, who first remarked the fixed constancy in the number of the carpels (a fact employed at the present day, since the time of Jussieu, as the basis of the natural classification of the vegetable kingdom), arrived, after numerous experiments and observations, at the conclusion that the anthers of male plants were indispensable to the female in the production of germs. The scientific foundation of the doctrine of the sexuality of plants was further advanced by our distinguished fellow-countrj--man, Rudolph Jacob Camerarius, Professor in Tiibingen. Ca-merarius supplied by his researches the groundwork for that first logically-contrived system of plants which, thirty years later, Linnaeus gave to his contemporaries. * Translated by J. T. Arlidge, A.B., M.B. &c., from the original memoir communicated by the Author, to whose kindness we are Ukewise indebted for the use of the original plates. Ann. ^-May. N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. viii. 6
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