39 History of the Sexual Theory. [BOOK in.

appropriate his honours fastened, as is usual, on these failures, without being able to account for the experiments which had been successful. The statement of his failures is our best proof of the exactness of his observations, for we now know the cause of failure, which Camerarius himself observed, but did not apply in explanation. We may assume that he would have cleared up this point in his splendid investigations in a quieter time, for at the end of his letter he laments the unjust war then raging ; it was the time of the predatory campaign of Louis XIV. To his letter is appended a Latin ode of twenty- six stanzas by an unknown poet, probably a pupil 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 Camera- rius to Frenchmen and Englishmen, because they were unac- quainted 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 estab-