Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/329

Rh and described, and the woodcuts in this quaint old herbal are of value even at this time. It is to be borne in mind, however, that Fuchs had formed no idea of the natural relationships of plants. The species given in the herbal are arranged in alphabetical order. It seems almost inconceivable at the present day, yet the descriptions of plants made by botanists in the period preceding Braunfels (1530) and Fuchs were not taken from nature, but were borrowed from still earlier writers, and supplemented by additions drawn purely from fancy and colored by the superstition of the time.

The establishment of the garden in 1663 was purely for the purpose of conserving medicinal plants, and only such specieswere cultivated as could be grown in the open air. The art of growing plants in artificially heated glass houses was not understood at that time. The garden occupied a plot of ground lying on the banks of the Neckar in what is now the heart of the city of Tübingen, where it remained until 1805, when it was removed to its present position.

The lectures in botany in the university took on a new dignity when a separate chair was devoted to the subject by the appointment of Rudolph Jacob Camerarius as extraordinary professor and director of the botanic garden in 1688. He was afterward promoted and remained at the university until his death, in 1728. Camerarius made a most notable addition to botanical science by the actual experimental demonstration of the principal facts in the pollination of plants (1691 to 1694). Sachs says in his history of botany: "Camerarius had observed that a female mulberry tree once bore fruit, though no male tree (amentaceis floribus) was in the neighborhood, but that the berries contained only abortive and empty seeds, which he compared to the addled eggs of a bird. His attention was aroused, and he made his first experiment on another diœcious plant (Mercurialis annua). He took, in the end of May, two female specimens of the wild plant (they were usually called male, but he knew them to be female) and set them in pots apart