of his own; it is an epitome of the ‘Epistola de sexu Plantarum,’ as Goethe’s well-known poem contains the chief points of his doctrine of metamorphosis, but it resembles Goethe’s composition in no other respect; it begins Novi canamus regna cupidinis, Novos amores, gaudia non prius Audita plantarum, latentes Igniculos, veneremque miram. 3. DISSEMINATION OF THE NEW DOCTRINE; ITS ADHERENTS AND OPPONENTS. 1700-1760. No part of botany has so often engaged the pen of the historian, as the doctrine of sexuality in plants; but the majority of writers have not gone to the original sources for their information, and the consequence has been that the merits of the real founders and promoters of the doctrine have often been thrown into the shade for the benefit of others; even German botanists have ascribed the services of Camerarius to Frenchmen and Englishmen, because they were unacquainted with his writings, or were unable to judge of the question and its solution. We shall here endeavour to show from the records of the 18th century how far anyone before Koelreuter really contributed anything of value to the establishment of the sexual theory. As is usually the case in great revolutions in science, some simply denied the new theory, many adopted it without understanding the question, others formed a perverse and distorted conception of it under the influence of reigning prejudices, while others again sought to appropriate to themselves the merit of the real discoverer; there were but few who with a right understanding of the question advanced it by new investigations. The botanists who endeavoured to aid in determining the matter by their own observations may be distinguished into those, to whom the important point was the enquiry whether the pollen is absolutely necessary to the formation of seed, such as Bradley, Logan, Miller, and Gleditsch, and those who like Geoffroy and Morland assumed that sexuality was no longer an open question, and who were bent on observing in what way the pollen effects fertilisation in the ovule. But there was another class of writers altogether, who, believing that they could deal with the subject without making observations and experiments of their own, either like Leibnitz, Burckhard, and Vaillant, simply accepted the results of the observations of others on general grounds, or like Linnaeus and his disciples, endeavoured to draw fresh proofs from philosophical principles, or like Tournefort and Pontedera, simply rejected the idea of sexuality in plants. Lastly, we might mention Patrick Blair who did nothing himself, but merely appropriated the general results of Camerarius’ observations, and has had his reward in being quoted even by German writers as one of the founders of the sexual theory[99].