In all accounts of the theory of sexuality in plants, a botanist otherwise unknown in history, Sir Thomas Millington, is named as the person who first claimed for the stamens the character of male organs of generation. The only record of the fact, however, is contained in the following words of Grew in his ‘Anatomy of Plants’ (1682), ch. 5, sect. 3, p. 171: ‘In conversation on this matter (namely the connection of the stamens, called by Grew the attire[96], with the formation of seeds) with our learned Savilian Professor Sir Thomas Millington, he told me he was of opinion that the attire served as the male organ in the production of the seed. I replied at once, that I was of the same opinion, and gave him some reasons for it, answering at the same time some objections that might be brought against it.’ Grew gives on p. 172 the following summary of his ideas on the subject[97]; it would appear, he says, that the attire serves to remove some superfluous parts of the sap, as a preparatory process to the production of seed. As the floral envelopes (foliature) serve to remove the volatile and saline sulphur-parts, so the attire serves to lessen and adjust the gaseous, in order that the seed may become more oily and its principles be better fixed. Here we find ourselves on the ground of the chemistry of the day, in which sulphur, salt, and oil play the chief parts. Consequently, continues Grew, the flower has usually a stronger smell than the attire, because the saline sulphur is stronger than the gaseous, which is too subtle to affect the sense. Closely adhering to Malpighi’s view he goes on to compare these processes in the flower with processes in the ovary of animals, inasmuch as they qualify the sap in the ovary for the approaching formation of seed, and he says that as the young and early attire before it opens contains the superfluous part of the female organ, so after it is opened it probably performs the office of the male. But how confused his ideas still were on this point may be further seen by examination of the passage which follows in his book (page 172, section 7), where, speaking of the single flowers in the head of the Compositae, he regards the blade, that is the style and stigma, of the floral attire as a portion of a male organ, and the globulets (pollen-grains) and other small particles upon the blade and in the thecae (anthers) of the seed-like attire as a vegetable sperm, which subsequently when the parts are duly matured falls down upon the seed-case and so touches it with a prolific virtue.