VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY. 57 



preserve their vegetative quality longer ; and as long as the 

 balsam is not dried up or spoiled, so long the seeds are fit to 

 germinate. Several insects, as bees, flies, and butterflies, live 

 on the honey juice only. Quint ilian, the Roman orator, has a 

 very singular case in one of his orations. " A poor man and a 

 rich man," says he, " had two small adjoining gardens. The 

 rich man had many fine flowers in his garden, and the poor man 

 had bees in his. The rich man complained that his flowers 

 were spoiled by the poor man's bees, which he warned him to 

 remove. The poor man not complying, the other scattered 

 poison on his flowers ; on which the poor man's bees all died ; 

 and Dives is guilty of this great injury. The poor man pleads 

 that the bees did no hurt at all to the rich man's flowers ; that 

 neither the Creator, nor any human laws, had ever restrained 

 bees within any certain limits ; and therefore the rich man might 

 hinder the bees from settling on his flowers if he could." But 

 the other might have objected, that the bees were so far hurtful 

 to his flowers, that they sucked the honey juice, and carried off 

 the fertilizing dust. After all, it is probable that the bees are 

 more useful than hurtful to flowers, since, by their unwearied 

 labors, they spread the fertilizing dust, so that it may reach the 

 pistil ; for it is not clear what use the honey juice is of in the 

 economy of flowers. From what has been said it appears, that 

 the generation of plants is performed by the fertilizing dust of 

 the anthers falling on the moist stigma, or female organ ; which 

 dust, by the help of the moisture, adheres and bursts, discharging 

 its contents, the subtle particles of which are absorbed by the style, 

 into the ovarium, germ, or seed bud. Upon the whole, we think 

 that the flowering of plants may be truly called their generation. 

 From what has been said it follows, that a flower which is 

 furnished with anthers, but wants the stigmas, is a male flower ; 

 that a flower which has stigmas, but no anthers, is a female ; 

 and one that has both is a hermaphrodite flower. Nor need we 

 wonder, that in the vegetable kingdom many plants are hermaph- 

 rodites, though in the animal kingdom there are a very few of 

 this kind ; for there one sex can easily move to the other ; 

 whereas plants are fixed to one spot, and cannot remove from it 



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