[99] See Patrick Blair’s ‘Botanic Essays,’ in two parts (1720), pp. 242-276. Even the Latin ode is borrowed without acknowledgment.
[100] The account in the text is taken from Koelreuter’s report in his ‘Historie der Versuche über das Geschlechte der Pflanzen,’ as given at p. 188 of Mikan’s ‘Opuscula Botanici Argumenti.’ Logan’s work, ‘Experimenta et Meletamata de Plantarum Generatione,’ unknown to me, is said by Pritzel to have been published at the Hague in 1739. Koelreuter cites from a London edition of 1747.
[101] Koelreuter’s report in Mikan’s collection is again the authority which is here relied on.
[102] Koelreuter says that he sent pollen of Chamaerops in 1766 to St. Petersburg and to Berlin, where it was successfully employed by Eckleben and Gleditsch. He wished to try how long the pollen retains its efficacy.
[103] See Vol. II. p. 502, of the ‘Physiologie végétale.’
[104] See Mikan, ‘Opuscula Botanici Argumenti,’ p. 180.
[105] Joseph Gottlieb Koelreuter was born at Sulz on the Neckar in 1733, and died at Carlsruhe in 1806, where he was Professor of Natural History, and from 1768 to 1786 Director also of the Botanic and Grand-ducal Gardens. On giving up the latter position he continued his experiments in his own small garden till the year 1790. Karl Friedrich Gärtner in his work ‘Ueber Bastardzeugung’ of 1849, at p. 5 says that after the latter date Koelreuter occupied himself with experiments in alchemy; but this must be a mistake. Gärtner, loco cit., and the ‘Flora’ of 1839, p. 245, supply all that seems to be known of the life of this distinguished man. The ‘Biographic Universelle’ contains no account of him. It would appear that he was in St. Petersburg before 1766.
[106] See Gärtner, ‘Ueber Bastardzeugung’ (1849), p. 62. I have unfortunately been unable to meet with the second continuation of Koelreuter’s work.
[107] Christian Konrad Sprengel, born in 1750, was for some time Rector at Spandau. There he began to occupy himself with botany, and devoted so much time to it that he neglected the duties of his office, and even the Sunday’s sermon, and was removed from his post. He afterward lived a solitary life in straitened circumstances in Berlin, being shunned by men of science as a strange, eccentric person. He supported himself by giving instruction in languages and in botany, using his Sundays for excursions, which any one who chose could join on payment of two or three groschen. He met with so little support and encouragement that he never brought out the second part of his famous work; his publisher did not even give him a copy of the first part. Natural disgust at the neglect with which his work was treated made him forsake botany and devote himself to languages. He died in 1816. One of his pupils wrote a very hearty eulogium on him in the ‘Flora’ of 1819, p. 541, which has supplied the above facts.
[108] See Hermann Müller, ‘Befruchtung der Blumen durch Insecten,’ Leipzig (1873). p. 5.