Note 118 — Chapter II · History of the Theory of the Nutrition of Plants. 1583-1860.

J. D. Major, who was born at Breslau in 1639, and died at Stockholm in 1693, is quoted by Christian Wolff, as well as by Reichel (‘De vasis plantarum.’ 1758, p. 4) and others, as the founder of the theory of circulation, which he propounded in 1665 in his ‘Dissertatio Botanica de planta monstrosa Gottorpiensi,’ etc. Kurt Sprengel (‘Geschichte der Botanik, ii. p. 7) classes him also among the defenders of the doctrine of palingenesia, a superstitious belief in the reproduction of plants and animals from their ashes, which was used to prove the resurrection of the dead.