PREFACE, . tii 



the fruit ; which might else, from unfavourable sea- 

 sons, or the want of a proper intermixture of the trees 

 of each sex, have been precarious, or at least not to 

 have been expected in equal quantities. 



It seems pretty extraordinary, that this discovery 

 should not have led the Ancients to detect the whole 

 process of nature in the propagation of the various 

 species of vegetables ; and yet it does not appear, 

 by any of their writings that are come down to us, 

 that they went farther than this obvious remark up- 

 on the Palm-tree, and some similar notions concerning 

 the Fig. They had-indeed, from what they saw in these 

 plants, formed a ribtion that all others were male and 

 female likewise * ; but this notion was false, the far 

 greater part having hermaphrodite flowers, which 

 serves to convince us, that what they discovered of 

 the Palm and Fig, was only a right guess, and not 

 founded on any knowledge of the anatomy of 

 flowers, either in those trees, or any others. 



In this dark state the doctrine of the sexes of ve- 

 getables , remained, not only through all the ages of 

 antiquity, but almost to the end of the last century, 

 the moderns seing no more of this doctrine than the 

 ancients had done before them ; and hence we have 

 to this very hour in use the false distinctions of male 

 and female species of Cornus, Pasony, Cistus and 

 many others, which have all hermaphrodite flowers^ 

 the distinction in these cases being grounded on no- 

 thing more than some difference in the habit of the 

 two species with which the sexes are no ways con- 

 cerned. 



The 



* Thus Theophrastus ; 



" In trees, considered universally, and taking in each seve- 

 " ral kind, there are, as has been said, many differences. One 

 " of these is common to them all, namely, that by which they 

 " are distnguished into female and male, of which the one bears 

 " fruit, the other not, in some kinds ; in those in which both 

 " bear fruit, that of the female is the best, unless these are to 

 " be called Males, for so they are called by some." 



Hist. PL Book III. Chap. 



