VOL. XLVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 487 



The male flower, as well as the female, is monopetalous, cut deeply into 4 

 segments, with a very small empalement, divided also into 4 parts. It has 4 

 conspicuous chives, which sustain yellow summits, in which is great plenty of 

 farina; but it has nothing like either stile, or ovary. The female flower has, 

 besides its essential pait, the ovary, 4 snort filaments, which have hitherto been 

 taken for chives, or male organs of generation ; but as he could not perceive that 

 they bear any summit, or yield any farina or fecundating dust, he rather believes 

 that they are tubes, which assist in conveying the impregnating particles to the 

 seeds; which opinion seems in some measure confirmed by the germ being placed 

 in the lower part of the seed, according to Caesalpinus, who ranges this tree 

 among those quarum semina cor in inferiore parte habent. 



Ray has placed it among the arbores flore, fructui contiguo; but Mr. M. 

 thinks it ought to be removed to the arbores flore a fructu remote. It must also 

 be removed from the tetrandria tetragynia of Linneus to the dioecia tetrandria. 

 But if the 4 filaments in the female flower should be found, on a more accurate 

 observation by better eyes, to be real chives, and to contain a fecundating dust, 

 it will belong to the polygamia. But whether the tree, which he verily believes 

 to be purely female, is really so, or hermaphrodite, he is certain that the other 

 is purely male; and even in this case his observation is new. 



Mr. IV. JVatsons Opinion on Mr. Martyns Paper on the Sex of the Holly, p. 6 15. 



I first examined, in company with Mr. Miller, the holly trees in the botanical 

 garden at Chelsea. We there found, as Mr. Martyn had, that the flowers were 

 of different sexes; but not as those in the Dr.'s garden, male and female on dif- 

 ferent plants, but female and hermaphrodite on different plants. I afterwards, 

 both at Hampstead, and at the duke of Argyll's at Whitton, observed several 

 trees bearing male flowers, others female flowers. Hence it appears, that not 

 only Mr. Martyn's obser\'ation of the holly being male and female in different 

 trees is well founded, but also that it is male, female, and hermaphrodite, on 

 diflferent trees; and I should not wonder, if on a still further examination, as in 

 the mulberry, that the male and female flowers of the holly should be found, not 

 only on different, but on the same tree: or even, as in the empetrum, or berry- 

 bearing heath, that some holly-trees should be found bearing only male flowers, 

 others bearing only female flowers, others only hermaphrodite flowers, others 

 both male and female, others both male and hermaphrodite, others female and 

 hermaphrodite, others still bearing flowers male, female, and hermaphrodite oa 

 the same tree. The holly therefore, as Dr. Martyn has justly observed, should 

 be removed, in the system of Linni'us, from the tetrandria tetragynia; but 

 not to the dioecia tetrandria, but ratlier to the class polygamia, and to the order 

 trioicia. 



