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and there from various authors to augment his observations, I abandon them to him
with a light heart. The other details I take directly from pure Nature, the only book
one must leaf through in order to avoid making mistakes by trying to impress people.Note that Vaillant never actually cites the original sources of the “beautiful facts”
Geoffroy is supposed to have purloined. However, Claude- Joseph Geoffroy did indeed
paraphrase a key passage from Rudolph Jacob Camerarius’s 1694 Sexu Plantarum Epistola
without citing it. Other observations Geoffroy reported in support of spermism in flowers
were clearly based on a 1703 paper in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions by the
British botanist Samuel Morland. Morland had made microscopic observations of the hol-
low pistils of lilies, erroneously claiming that they provided a direct route for pollen grains
to impregnate the ovule.^15 Geoffroy drew the same conclusion based on nearly identical
observations of hollow lily styles in his 1711 discussion of spermism versus ovism.^16
Questions have also been raised over whether Claude- Joseph Geoffroy actually per-
formed the maize emasculation experiments he described or whether he plagiarized them
entirely from Camerarius. In response to Vaillant’s accusations, Geoffroy wrote two drafts
of a letter of rebuttal in 1718 in which he bitterly defended himself against the charge of pla-
giarism. Focusing narrowly on the issue of terminology, he cited the 1704 medical thesis of
his older brother, the physician- botanist Étienne- François Geoffroy, as the original source
of the terms he had used in his 1711 lecture. Claude- Joseph then leveled the countercharge
that it was Vaillant, not he, who had plagiarized his brother’s thesis. But Geoffroy failed to
mention that his brother’s 1704 thesis also contained the same unattributed experiments of
Camerarius that he himself claimed to have performed in 1711.^17 In fact, Etienne- François’s
lecture in Latin was so popular that it was presented a second time for the general public and
subsequently translated into French. It appears that the Geoffroy brothers had both gained
considerable prestige and acclaim by appropriating the same experiments of Camerarius
twice in the space of seven years!^18
As the scandal raged on, Geoffroy wrote his two letters to the Academy defending him-
self against the charge of plagiarism. In a rare moment of candor, he conceded that the
sexual theory had been around for “a long time” and that both Vaillant and he could plau-
sibly be accused of plagiarism:But, in the end, this is a doctrine which preceded his by a long time, on behalf of
which its authors, if they were in the same bad mood he is in, could cry “Thieves!”
at us. Because let’s face it, both of us are thieves in this matter, and I invite anyone to
judge who is the good thief and who is the bad one.^19Geoffroy never names these “authors” who could cry “Thieves!” Nor does he define the
difference between a “good thief ” and a “bad thief.” Nevertheless, the statement is the clos-
est Geoffroy comes to admitting that he had misappropriated some of the material in his
lecture, although he did not include this mea culpa in the version of the letter he presented
to the Academy.
As a parting shot, Geoffroy expressed disgust over Vaillant’s lurid descriptions of pol-
lination, which, he stated, would be more appropriate for “Priapic festivals” than a scientific