Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/442

4'22 the arrangements in the flower discovered by Sprengel together with the aid of insects serve to secure the strongest and most numerous progeny possible. Darwin was the first who fixed his eye distinctly on this idea also, in order to employ it in his theory of selection, and sought support for it in a number of experiments made after 1857.

who have read the writings of Camerarius and Koelreuter carefully find it difficult to believe, that after their time doubts were still entertained not about the manner in which the processes of fertilisation are accomplished but about the actual existence of difference of sex in plants. And yet such doubts were expressed repeatedly during the succeeding sixty years in various quarters and with the greatest confidence, and this not in consequence of increased accuracy in experimental research or of contradictions that could be proved in the views of the founders of the sexual theory, but because a number of observers made unskilful experiments and obtained contradictory results, or made inaccurate observations on the plants on which they experimented, and generally had not the requisite experience and circumspection. Such were Spallanzani and later Bernhardi, Giron de Bouzareingue and Ramisch. Schelver, his pupil Henschel, and their adherents erred still more grossly and from a different cause ; they thought themselves justified by preconceived opinions and conclusions from the nature-philosophy in denying facts established by experiment. The destructive effects of the nature-philosophy on the powers of the understanding at the beginning of the 19th century was shown in the case of many botanists, who were no longer able to estimate the result of simple experiments, and to trace back the phenomena of nature to the scheme of causes and effects. As Linnaeus once imagined that he could