Sir Thomas Millington and the Sexuality of Plants

Abstract

IN your article last week on the Oxford Botanic Garden, reference is made to Sir Thomas Millington, the Savilian Professor of Botany, as having in 1676 “first divined the fundamental fact of sexual reproduction in flowering plants.” In a review in the columns of the Academy, of the English edition of Sachs's “Text-book of Botany,” by Prof. E. R. Lankester, the Savilian Professor is also spoken of as having “discovered the sexuality of plants.” It would interest students of the history of botany to know to what extent the writer of either of these articles is able to corroborate this statement by reference to Sir Thomas Millington's writings. In his recently published “History of Botany,” Prof. Sachs gives the following account of this alleged discovery:—“In all histories relating to the subject of sexuality, a certain Sir Thomas Millington—otherwise unknown in the history of botany—is mentioned as deserving of the credit of having first indicated the stamens as the male sexual organs. The only information, however, which we have in support of this is contained in the following statement by Grew in his ‘Anatomy of Plants,’ 1682, p. 171, ch. 5, §.3:—‘In conversation on this subject’—viz., on the part played by the stamens (termed by Grew the ‘attire’) in the formation of seeds—‘with our learned Savilian Professor, Sir Thomas Millington, he gave it as his opinion that the ‘attire’ serves as the male organ for the production of the seed. I at once replied that I was of the same opinion, gave him some reasons for it, and answered some objections which might be made to it.’”^* In the first edition of Grew's work, 1671, he attributes no sexual function to the stamens; but in the edition of 1681 he thus continues, in substance:—It appears firstly, that the “attire” serves to separate certain superfluous portions of the sap in order to prepare for the production of the seed. Just as the foliature (floral leaves) serves to carry away the volatile saline particles of sulphur, so the “attire” serves to diminish and adjust the atmospheric portions, in order that the seed may become more oily and its principles better fixed. The flowers have therefore usually a more powerful odour than the “attire,” because the saline is stronger than the atmospheric sulphur, which is too subtle to affect the senses. An analogy drawn from the animal kingdom follows, which is hardly quotable; but Sachs points out how wonderfully any germ of truth in Grew's hypothesis was corrupted by the chemical theories and strivings after a false analogy of the day. It is difficult to see that there was really any advance in this hypothesis upon the state of knowledge in the time of Theophrastus (B.C. 371–286), who distinctly recognised some individual plants as male, others as female. Whatever merit also is due to Millington must, unless there is other record of his services, be at least equally shared with Grew.† It does not appear, however, that either of these botanists even attempted to confirm their conclusions by experiment. The merit of the first discovery of the true function of the stamens is assigned by Prof. Sachs to the German botanist Camerarius, in his “De sexu plantarum epistola,” published in 1694. This tract closes with an ode, reminding one of Darwin's “Loves of the Plants,” beginning thus— “Novi canamus regna Cupidinis, Novos amores, gaudia non prius Audita plantarum, latentes Igniculos, Veneremque miram.”