confusion of ideas which lies at the bottom of these and many similar statements, and in the same chapter have sufficiently indicated our opinion respecting Linnaeus’ share in the establishment of the doctrine of sexuality. It was the character of Linnaeus’ mind to attach slight value to the experimental proof of a fact, even when, like that of sexuality, it could only be proved by experiment; from the point of view of his scholastic philosophy it was more important with him to deduce the existence of this fact, in what seemed to him the philosophic way, from the idea of the plant or from reason, and in doing so to drag in a variety of analogies from the animal kingdom; hence he acknowledged the services rendered by Camerarius, but troubled himself little about his experiments which alone could decide the question, while he undertakes himself to prove the existence of sexes in plants on grounds of reason and the like in his peculiar fashion. How he did this in the ‘Fundamenta’ and in the ‘Philosophia Botanica’ has been already shown. Here we will briefly notice the often-quoted dissertation, ‘Sponsalia Plantarum,’ in the first volume of the ‘Amoenitates Academicae’ (1749). He first gives the views of Millington, Grew, Camerarius and others; then on p. 63 he accepts the statement of Gustav Wahlboom, that he, Linnaeus, had devoted infinite labour to this question in 1735 in the ‘Fundamenta Botanica,’ and had there (§§ 132-150) proved the sexes of plants with so great certainty that no one would hesitate to found on it a detailed classification of plants. Here then we have once more the construction of Linnaeus’ so-called sexual system introduced into the question of sexuality, as if it had anything whatever to do with the establishing the existence of sexes in plants, and as to the infinite labour (infinito labore) which Linnaeus is supposed to have given to the question, the paragraphs cited from the ‘Fundamenta’ contain the scholastic subtleties quoted in Book I. chap. 2, but not one single really new proof. The arguments in the dissertation we are considering are of exactly the same kind, and it is itself only a lengthy paraphrase of Linnaeus’ propositions in the ‘Fundamenta Botanica,’ illustrated by experiments made by others, and with the addition of a few unimportant observations, some of which are misinterpreted. We read, for instance, p. 101, ‘Nectar is found in almost all flowers, and Pontedera thinks that it is absorbed by the seeds that they may be the longer preserved; it might seem that bees must be hurtful to flowers, since they carry away the nectar and the pollen;’ but Linnaeus, differing from Pontedera, remarks that ‘bees do more good than harm, because they scatter the pollen on the pistil, though it is not yet ascertained what is the importance of the nectar in the physiology of the flower.’ This fact of the assistance rendered by insects, which was soon afterwards