PREFACE. IJ 



thin both in their fhoots and in their leaves ; fo 

 that their nutritive juices may not be unnecef- 

 farily wafted in feeding fuperfluous branches and 

 leaves. 



Seventhly, I have taken notice that the cu- 

 cumber plant bears male and female flowers ; it 

 therefore differs from the greateft number of 

 plants, whofe flowers are hermaphrodite, that is, 

 they contain within them the charaders of both 

 fexes *, or the male and female organs of gene- 



raiion 



* The fexuai fyftem is fuggefted and confirmed by the analogy 

 obfervable between the eggs of animals and feeds of plant?, both 

 ferving equally to the fame end, that is, that of propagating a 

 fimilar race ; and, by the remarks which have been made, that 

 when the feed of the female plant is not impregnated with the pro- 

 lific powder of the male, it bears no fruit, infomuch that as often 

 as the communication between the fexuai parts of plants hae been 

 intercepted, which is the caufe of their fecundity, they have 

 always proved barren. The authors of this fyflem, after exactly 

 anatomizing all the parts of the plant, aflign to each a name, 

 founded on its ufe and analogy to the parts of an animal. 

 Tims as to the male organs, the filaments are the fpermatic veffels, 

 the anthera the tefticles, and the duft of the anthera correfponds 

 to the fperm and feminal animalcules ; and as to the female, the 

 ftigma is the internal part of the female organ which receives the 

 duft, the ftyle anfwers to the vagina, the germ to the ovarv, and 

 the perlcarpium, or fecundated ovary, to the womb. 



The fexuai fyftem was not wholly unknov/n to the ancients, 

 though their knowledge of it v/as very imperfed. Accordingly 

 "we find in the account by Herodotus of the country about Babylon 

 where palm-trees abounded, that it v/as a cuflom with the natives 

 in their culture of thefe plants to alTill the operations of nature by 



gatleiing 



