THE PROCESS OF REPRODUCTION. 457 



the white of the egg of birds, or the allantoid of 

 viviparous animals. 



Sexes of Plants. The attribution of sexes to 

 plants, is a notion which was very early adopted; 

 but only gradually unfolded into distinctness and 

 generality 9 . The ancients were acquainted with the 

 fecundation of vegetables. Empedocles, Aristotle, 

 Theophrastus, Pliny, and some of the poets, make 

 mention of it : but their notions were very incom- 

 plete, and the conception was again lost in the 

 general shipwreck of human knowledge. A Latin 

 poem, composed in the fifteenth century by Jovianus 

 Pontanus, the preceptor of Alphonso, King of 

 Naples, is the first modern work in which mention 

 is made of the sex of plants. Pontanus sings the 

 loves of two date-palms, which grew at the distance 

 of fifteen leagues from each other: the male at 

 Brundusium, the female at Otranto. The distance 

 did not prevent the female from becoming fruitful, 

 as soon as the palms had raised their heads above 

 the surrounding trees, so that nothing intervened 

 directly between them, or, to speak with the poet, 

 so that they were able to see each other. 



Zaluzian, a botanist who lived at the end of the 

 fifteenth century, says that the greater part of the 

 species of plants are androgynes, that is, have the 

 properties of the male and of the female united in 

 the same plant; but that some species have the 

 two sexes in separate individuals ; and he adduces 

 9 Mirbel, El. ii 538. 



