Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/344

 314 At the revival of learning botanists more occupied in determining the species, and investigating the medical properties of plants, than in studying their physiology; and when after a while the subject in question was started, some of them, as Morison, Tournefort and Pontedera, uniformly treated with great contempt the hypothesis which has since been established. We shall, as we proceed, advert to some of their arguments.

About the year l676, Sir Thomas Millington, Savilian Professor at Oxford, is recorded to have hinted to Dr. Grew that the use of the Stamens was probably to perfect and fertilize the seed. Grew adopted the idea, and the great Ray approved it. Several other botanists either followed them, or had previously conceived the same opinion, among which R. J. Camerarius, Professor at Tubingen towards the end of the seventeenth century, was one of the most able and original. Vaillant wrote an excellent oration on the subject, which being hostile to the opinions of Tournefort, lay in obscurity till published by Boerhaave. Blair and Bradley assented in England, and several continental