356 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



India, who asserts catechu to be made up of the juice 

 of the fruit of Areca or Fau^el, and a certain mineral 

 earth of that place. 



5. He presents us with a sort of pistachio tree, which 

 he caUs Pistaciiim mas siculum folio nigricante \Pistacia 

 trifolia, Linn.], which produces no esculent fruit, being 

 by itself barren, though in respect of the female, which it 

 impregnates with fruit, it may be said to be fruitful. 

 Then he gives us the notes of distinction between the 

 male and female pistachio, and tells us how the country- 

 men ingravidate the female with the flowers of the male, 

 viz. : they wait till the female hath its flowers explicated. 

 Then they take at their discretion many flowers of the 

 male which are in bud and just ready to open, and put 

 them into a vessel, and having encompassed them with 

 earth moistened with water, they hang this vessel with 

 the flowers on a branch of the female pistachio, and there 

 leave it till the flowers be dried, so that the powder 

 which they scatter may more easily, by the help of the 

 wind, be dispersed over all the branches of the tree, and 

 ingravidate them with fruit. Other more compendious 

 ways he mentions, which the countrymen use of scatter- 

 ing the dust or powder of the flowers of the male upon 

 the female. He teUs us that the male for the most part 

 flowers and scatters its prolific powder before the female 

 puts forth its blossoms, which happens in most plants 

 supposed to differ in sexes, and what provision they make 

 in that case. This being the general practice in Sicily 

 must needs depend upon observation, that without so 

 doing the trees would not be fruitful, or at least not to 

 that degree, and confirms the opinion that there is in 

 plants also a difference of sex. 



This whole observation about the pistachios he inserts 

 also into his Museo di Fisica and di Esperienze 

 Variato, &c. 



6. He brings an observation concerning a woman of 

 Chambery, in Savoy, who, being afflicted with a fierce 

 apoplexy, after various medicines in vain used, grew lame 



