178 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, [aNNO J751. 



tlieir fruit; and what therefore they have denominated male and female, must 

 not with the modern exactness be rigorously considered as such. Thus Aristotle, 

 after having taken notice that there was the distinction of male and female ob- 

 servable in plants, says, " that the male plant is more rough and strong, the fe- 

 male more weak and fruitful." And Theophrastus, when speaking of the male 

 and female pine tree, says, " that the Macedonians have trees nearly related to 

 pines, of which the male is of shorter growth, and has harder leaves; that the 

 female is taller, and has its leaves softer and more fleshy." He says, on his own 

 authority, " that the wood of the male pine is hard, that of the female more 

 soft." Pliny also in his history gives a like reason for his distinguishing the sex 

 of the pine: he says further, in another part of the valuable monument he has 

 left us, " that the most expert naturalists assert, that every tree, and every herb, 

 which the earth produces, has both sexes;" but this is to be understood in the 

 manner just mentioned; and so likewise is the distinction among the more mo- 

 dern botanists in their denominations of several plants, such as veronica, eupa- 

 torium, anagallis, tilia, paeonia, balsamita, filix, quercus, orchis, laureola, abro- 

 tanum, com us, polygonum, equisetum, mandragora, and others, which are 

 termed imaginarily male and female; as the discovery of the real sex of plants 

 was reserved for the accuracy of the present age. Besides the before-mentioned 

 erroneous principle, from which the ancients, as well as some more modeiTi 

 authors, determined the sex of plants, there is yet another, and that is, a deno- 

 mination of plants from their sex, which is absolutely false; and in order to elu- 

 cidate this position, and to show at the same time in what the sex of plants really 

 consists. Mr. W. premises, that it is in the flowers of vegetables only that the 

 parts subservient to generation are produced. Simple flowers, to use this term 

 in opposition to the compound flowers of the botanists, are either male, female, 

 or hermaphrodite. By male flowers, he means those which are possessed only 

 of those organs of generation analogous to the male parts of animals; and these 

 are what former botanists have denominated stamina and apices, but are since 

 named more properly by Linneus, filamentum and anthera. The female flower 

 is only endowed with parts like those which perform the office of generation in 

 females; and these are the pistillum and its appurtenances, which, by Linneus, 

 with his accustomed accuracy, are divided into three parts, viz. the germen, 

 stylus, and stigma. The hermaphrodite flower, which constitutes the great bulk 

 of the vegetable creation, is possessed of all these parts in itself, and is itself 

 thus capable of propagating its species without any foreign assistance; which, by 

 many incontestible experiments, it has been found neither the male nor female 

 flower simply is able to do. Much the greater number of plants, as just hinted, 

 have hermaphrodite flowers; but there are some which have both the male and 

 female flowers growing from the same root. Such are mayz, or Indian corn, 



