Nehemiah Grew, in 1682, first suggested fertilization as the use of pollen by flowers. Camerarius in 1694, and Vaillant in 1717, completed Grew's observations, but the doctrine was not universally admitted till 1729, when Linnaeus published his excellent treatise "De Nuptiis et Sexu Plantarum et Spunsalia Plantarum. Kolreuter, 1761, was the first to suggest cross-fertilization, through the agency of wind or of insects. Spren-gel, in 1793, submitted that the fertilization of a hermaphrodite flower by its own pollen was the exception. Andrew Knight, 1799, advocated that a plant would not continue fertile by its own pollen through many generations. Robert Brown confirmed many of these views by observations on Asclepiadaceae and Orchidaceae. In 1862, Darwin issued his work on the "Fertilization of Orchids," and the evidence he offered has been confirmed by the observations of Hildebrand, Axell, Delpino, Muller, Lubbock, Slade, etc. Since then Haekel and others have believed that the views of the others claim more for the relations between color and insects, than the facts warrant, but the subsequent observations of M. Musset seem to indicate that Haekel's views are unsound. - Abridged from Revue de l'Horticulture Beige.