250 



THE PHILOSOPHY 



like the American aloe, the tree, during all this time, was making 

 gradual advances toward perfedion ; that, when the male branch 

 happened to be fufpended over the female, the plant had arrived at 

 the higheft degree of maturity it could ever acquire in the climate 

 of Berlin ; and, of courfe, that the accidental circumftance of fu- 

 fpending the male branch over it, at this critical period, might give 

 rife to the deception of attributing the ripening of the fruit to the 

 prefence of the male branch. The produdlion of loo ripe fruit 

 only the firft year, and 2000 the fecond, is a ftrong corroboration 

 of this account of the matter. At any rate, the experiment is ex- 

 ceedingly defedtive and unfatisfadlory. To convince any man that 

 the fertility of this tree was folely owing to fome impregnating vir- 

 tu^e communicated to it by the male, a branch fhould have been fu- 

 fpended over the female one year, omitted the next, and fo on al- 

 ternately for a fuccefTion of feafons, or, as the fexualifts would ex- 

 prefs it, giving her a hufband one year, and denying her that gratifi- 

 cation the next. After treating the female in this manner, if it had 

 uniformly happened, that the fruit ripened every year the male 

 branch was fufpended, and that none came to maturity when that 

 operation was omitted, then there would have been fome founda- 

 tion for fuppofmg a connexion between the ripening of the fruit 

 and the prefence of the male branch. But, as this neceflary pre- 

 caution was omitted, the experiment is incomplete, and the conclu- 

 fion drawn from it precipitate and unphilofophic. 



In accounting for the fecundity of all the dioicous * and monoe- 

 cious t plants^ the fexualifts have recourfe to the aid of the winds, 

 and of infeiSls. They betake themfelves to this ftrange refuge, in 



order 



* Plants which have the male charafter in one individual, and the female in an- 

 other. 



\ Plants which have both the male and female ciiaraders in the fame individuaL 



