536 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1721. 



where I only assert that several fcetuses partake equally of male and female ; but 

 here two males concur with one female in the composition of a 4th body, made 

 up of all three : and one seed produces a cabbage consisting of three different 

 species, which could never happen, did these organized animalcula, or granules 

 of the farina, become a foetus, or contain the folia seminalia of a plant. This 

 methinks is sufficient to answer what the ingenious Mr. Bradley has so strenu- 

 ously contended for, in his Works of Nature, p. g, et seq. 



It might be useful to consider how far this may lead us into the infinite 

 variegations and stripes, not only in annual flowers, such as poppies, consolida 

 regalis, and bottles, but also in perennial roots ; such as auriculas, cowslips, &c. 

 of a lower size, which is hinted by Mr. Bradley, having received that notion 

 from the ingenious Mr. Du Bois, as I have been credibly informed ; and in 

 plants of a larger size, not of a bulbous, but carnous root, such as columbines, 

 where there is a vast variety : and in this plant it is most especially to be ob- 

 served, that though the indigenous one, from which all the other seem only to 

 be variations, and not determinate species, be of a blue colour, consisting of 

 10 alternate petala, viz. 5 corniculate, and 5 plain ; yet into how many other 

 kinds of flowers it is subdivided; such as pale yellow, with bluish red, purple, 

 dark double stripes, blue, blackish red, &c. Some with corniculate petala, and 

 some only with plain ; and how in single flowers it imitates all the colours we 

 see pigeons endowed with. I say it is worthy of consideration, whether the 

 farina may do this, since I do not understand there has been much art used in 

 making these flowers break, as tulips, or to cultivate a set of breeders ; but 

 that a richer soil may produce a double flower ; and a suitable loam may produce 

 the variety of colours; the farina from several flowers may occasion the stripes, 

 and the stamina arising from the plain petala, rather than the cornicula, pour- 

 ing out the farina, may cause the flowers with the plain petala. So that were I 

 to extend this to a great many other plants, and were there proper observations 

 made on them, considerable improvements might be made in this doctrine of 

 the sexes of plants. For after the flowers, we come next to the variegation of 

 the seed of some plants, particularly the phaseoli, whose various spots and 

 colours, and even the size too, may very much depend on the effluvia from the 

 farina, when several kinds are sown together. For do but consider three plain 

 colours, a white, red, and dark blue, and you may observe how many descend- 

 ants, and what a variety of spots may proceed from them. The lupines also in 

 some measure may be brought in here ; and perhaps the medica cochleata, fal- 

 cata,lunata, may be multiplied in its variations, after the same manner. But it 

 is time to proceed to another experiment of my correspondent Mr. Millar. 



