326 SEXUALITY OF VEGETABLES. CHAP. VI. 



again produced imperfect as before. About the 

 year 1755, there grew in the garden of M. De la 

 Serre, at Paris, a female Pistachio-tree which blos- 

 somed every summer, but without producing any 

 fruit capable of germinating ; as M. De la Serre had 

 frequently sown the seeds it yielded in the hope of 

 raising more plants, though without success. At 

 last, however, he was advised by Bernard De 

 Jussieu and Du Hamel to endeavour to procure a 

 male plant and place it near it : accordingly a male 

 plant was procured in the following year, full of 

 flowers, and placed near the female ; the result being, 

 as in other cases of a similar kind, that the seed now 

 produced was capable of germinating when sown. 

 But when the male plant was afterwards removed, 

 the fruit of the female plant was found to be again 

 incapable of germinating as before.* 



In the month of April, ]752, Linnaeus sowed a 

 few grains of Hemp-seed in two different pots, in 

 both of which it came up very well. In the one pot he 

 left the male and female plants together, which flower- 

 ed and produced fruit that was ripe in July ; from the 

 other pot he removed all the male plants as soon as 

 they could be distinguished from the females, which 

 grew indeed very well and presented their long pis- 

 tils in great abundance, as if in expectation of their 

 mates. But when the calyxes were afterwards in- 

 spected, about the time that the pistils began to 

 decay through age, though they were large indeed 



* Phys. dcs Arb. liv. iii. chap. Hi. 



