We have now to see what was really brought to light by further
experiment and observation. BRADLEY appears to have been the first who
experimented on hermaphrodite flowers with a view to establish the
sexuality of plants (‘New improvements in Gardening’ (1717), I. p.
20). He planted twelve tulips by themselves in a secluded part of his
garden, and as soon as they began to flower removed the anthers; the
result was, that not one of them produced seeds, while four hundred
tulips in another part of the same garden produced seeds in abundance.
Twenty years pass by before another experiment is made. JAMES
LOGAN[100], Governor of Pennsylvania, an Irishman by birth, set some
plants of maize in each corner of a plot of ground, which was forty
feet broad, and about eighty long, and experimented on them in various
ways. In October he noted the following results:—the cobs of the
plants, from which he had removed the male panicles when the stigmas
were already dependent, presented a good appearance; but closer
examination showed that they were unfertilised, with the exception of
one which was turned in the direction from which the wind might have
conveyed pollen from other plants. On the cobs, from which he had
removed some of the stigmas, he found exactly as many grains as he had
left stigmas. One cob, which had been wrapped in muslin before the
appearance of the stigmas, produced only empty husks.
Miller’s experiments in 1751, which Koelreuter has extracted from the
‘Gardener’s Dictionary,’ part II[101], are specially interesting,
because the aid of insects in pollination was then observed for the
first time. Miller planted twelve tulips, six or seven ells apart, and
carefully removed the stamens as soon as the flowers began to open;
he imagined that he should thus entirely prevent fertilisation; some
days after he saw some bees load themselves with pollen in an ordinary
tulip-bed and fly over to his imperfect flowers. After they were gone,
he observed that they had left on the stigmas a quantity of pollen
sufficient for fertilisation, and these tulips did in fact produce
seed. Miller also kept some female plants of spinach apart from the
male, and found that they bore large seeds without embryos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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