2j§ THE PHILOSOPHY 



the fame fpecies were blown in Britain. The flowers and the young 

 feed had every appearance of heaUh and vigour. But the plant it- 

 felf, as ufualiy happens to vegetables when forced to grow in unna- 

 tural fituations, was feeble, flender, and double the common length 

 it acquires in the fields. I waited the event. My expedations, 

 however, were difappointed ; for the flowers dropped long before 

 the feeds were ripened. The plant was kept three years in the fame 

 fituation ; but flill the flowers dropped, and no ripe feeds were pro- 

 duced. As the health of plants, like that of animals, depends upon 

 many circumftances, as expofure to the open air, to light, to the agi- 

 tations of the wind, which to them anfwers the invigorating purpofe 

 of exercife, to nodurnal dews, to natural rains, inftead of artificial 

 waterings, &c. I refolved to place the female lychnis in a fituation 

 where fhe might enjoy all thefe advantages, and at the fame time be 

 removed from every fufpicion of a connedion with male influence. 

 For this purpofe, 1 applied to my learned and ingenious friend Dr 

 Daniel Rutherford, now Profeflxjr of Botany in the Univerfity of 

 Edinburgh, who, at that time, had. a fmall garden, or rather a little 

 area, in the heart of the city, which was furrounded with houfes of 

 five and fix flories high, and diftant from any male lychnis about an 

 Englifh mile. Dr Rutherford received this female lychnis into his 

 garden. The firft fummer after her admiflion, being enfeebled by 

 her former three years confinement, fhe dropped her flowers, with- 

 out producing fertile feeds. During three or four fucceeding years, 

 however, fhe remained in the fame fituation ; and fhe not only 

 ripened her feeds, but thefe feeds vegetated, without the poffibility of 

 any male impregnation ; for the Dodor, after the young plants were 

 in a ftate of difcrimination, uniformly extirpated all the males,, and 

 never could, difcover the veftige of a fingle male upon the female 

 plants. Her female progeny, however, continued to bear fertile feeds 

 Ibr feveral fucceffive generations. If, after this, and fome experiments 

 &rmejly mentioned,, any fexualift choofes to have recourfe to the 



windj. 



