f 86 ] 



breed, which produced its own kind without variation for 

 ten or twelve years, that I continued to cultivate it and 

 preferve it from any intermixture with other forts. If it 

 were not a very eafy matter for any one who can have 

 accefs to green and yellow turnips to repeat this experi- 

 ment for his own fatisfaction, I mould have been fome- 

 what fliy to mention the fact ; but as the experiment is fo 

 ilmple and eafily made, I prefume any one who doubts it 

 will take the trouble to fatisfy himfelf experimentally about 

 it. :;The fame may be done with white and red cabbages 

 or beets, where thefe more readily occur. 



This experiment, at the fame time that it feems in this 

 cafe to confirm Linnasus's fexual fyftem of the procrea- 

 tion of plants, in a ftill ftronger degree feems to ftrike at 

 the root of the doctrine of ' feminal varieties , in the fenfe it 

 has been ufually underftood to bear, while it pretty clearly 

 accounts for the origin of that doctrine. Men have ob- 

 ferved, that in certain cafes new varieties of plants, which 

 had not been obferved before, have been obtained from 

 feeds. This might naturally happen where feveral vari- 

 eties of the fame kind of plants were allowed to flower, 

 and to ripen their feeds together. The mongrel breed, 

 efpecially among the gaudy tribe of flowers, fometimes 

 might poiTefs beauties that did not belong to either of the 

 parent kinds, which would not fail to make them be parti- 

 cularly taken notice of. In this way, before any idea was 

 entertained of any kind of fexual fyftem in plants, this caufe 

 of the obvious change produced could not be adverted to, 

 and it would be accounted an accidental anomalous feminal 

 variety : and having obferved this fact in feveral cafes, it 

 might be accounted a general law of nature, no pains hav- 

 ing been taken to overturn it by oppofing facts equally 

 obvious at leaft. For the experience of the kitchen gar- 

 dener, 



