OF NATURAL HISTORY. 255 



^ Royal Academy at Berlin, without producing any ripe or 



* fertile fruit ; that a male branch, with Its flowers in full 



* blow, was brought from Leiplic, about twenty German 



< miles from Berlin, and fufpended over the female tree. 



< The refult was, that the female yielded, the lirft year, 100 



< ripe dates. The fame experiment being repeated the fol- 



* lowing year, 2000 ripe fruit were produced.' 



Not to call Mylius's veracity in queftion, the experiment 

 is both Inconclufive and defective. Berlin is not the climate 

 of palm trees. The tree, he informs us, bore flowers and 

 fruit for thirty years before the trial was made ; but the 

 fruit, it is faid, never came to maturity. Plants feldom pro- 

 duce ripe fruit in a climate not adapted to their nature, un^ 

 til they have grown there a long time. Mylius's palm-tree 

 had carried unripe fruit for thirty years. According to the 

 ufual courfe of exotic plants, therefore. It is natural to think, 

 that like the American aloe, the tree, duriiag all this time, 

 was making gradual advances toward perfection ; that, when 

 the male branch happened to be fufpended over the female, 

 the plant had arrived at the hlghefl degree of maturity it 

 could ever acquire in the climate of Berlin ; and, of courfe, 

 that the accidental circumfiance of fufpending the pialc 

 branch over it, at this critical period, might give rife to the 

 deception of attributing the ripening of the fruit to the 

 prefence of the male branch. Tlie produtSlIon of 100 ripe 

 fruit only the iirft year, and 2000 the feccnd, is a ilrong 

 corroboration of this account of the matter. At any rate, 

 the experiment is exceedingly defe£live and unfatisfa6tory. 

 To convince any man that the fertility of this tree was 

 folely owing to fome impregnating virtue communicated to 

 it by the male, a branch fhould have been fufpended over 

 the female one year, omitted the next, and fo on alternately 

 for a fuccefTion of feafons, or, as the fexualifls would exprefs 

 it, giving her a hufband one year^ and denying her that gra- 



