cxlii On the Word Hermaphrodite. 



to this effect : — " Dea Venere ; nam Deus communi genere aliquando suraitur: " and 

 Lucan, i. 2, 80 ; Euripides, Troad. v. 948 ; and Demosthenes, Orat. de Coronet, are 

 cited in support : the last of these certainly appears to make the gods bisexual. The 

 annotator might have added Hesychius, who calls Venus Aphrodifos ; and Theophras- 

 tus, who asserts that Hermaphroditos is Venus, and that her statue in the Isle of Cy- 

 prus had a beard like a man. Hence it is tolerably clear that Hermaphroditos was a 

 myth, intended to represent the passion of love, and to indicate that such passion was 

 common to both sexes. Compare also Calvus and Heyne, passim. 



In the other meaning given in Hederich, it will be observed a great discrepancy 

 exists: "half-male," "of doubtful sex," and "androgynous,'' or having both sexes 

 complete. It remains to be seen how far these terms are capable of restricted appli- 

 cation. 



The great John Hunter divided hermaphrodites into two kinds, " the natural and 

 the unnatural, uncommon, or monstrous." " The natural," says that eminent anato- 

 mist, " belongs to the inferior and more simple order of animals, of which there are a 

 much greater number than of the more perfect : but as animals become more compli- 

 cated, have more parts, and each part is confined to its particular use, a separation of 

 the two necessary powers for generation has also taken place in them."* 



It may be assumed that this division was Hunter's ultimatum on the subject, and 

 it seems to have been received as satisfactory, since it has uniformly been adopted by 

 compilers, although allusions to the name of Hunter are rarely met with, and his ad- 

 mirable paper still more rarely quoted. Let us consider the question of its sufficiency. 



In the first place we are told of hermaphrodites in the vertebrate province of the 

 animal kingdom : these are beings which, being female, present certain abnormal or 

 not truly female appearances. I believe anatomists are perfectly agreed that the sex- 

 ual parts in the higher animals are essentially the same in both sexes, but differently 

 modified ; there is then nothing extraordinary in the occurrence of instances wherein 

 this difference of modification is incomplete: such incompleteness occurs not uncom- 

 monly in the ox tribe, more rarely in the sheep tribe, and still more rarely in the horse 

 tribe. It is not desirable to pursue this branch of the subject, and it will be sufficient 

 to say, that imperfect females are barren, not possessing even the natural attributes of 

 a single sex, the only name by which they are known is that of free martins. It is by 

 no means improbable that barrenness in all instances is a consequence of this tenden- 

 cy, although it maybe the only mode in which the peculiarity is exhibited. This class 

 of phenomena might be called Pseudogynous: that is, falsely or imperfectly female. 



In the second place, we are constantly told of hermaphrodites in the insect pro- 

 vince of the animal kingdom ; and this class of phenomena is as curious as it is deci- 

 dedly abnormal. One half of the individual is male, and the other half female, the 

 division by a longitudinal mesial line of separation being very manifest: the antennas 

 in many insects present a marked contrast in the two sexes, and it is very striking in 

 such instances to find each character of antennae issuing from the same head. Phe- 

 nomena of this class are clearly comprehended in the term semimas, but I doubt whe- 

 ther this would be so expressive as Hemigynous, or half-female, which moreover har- 

 monizes better with the preceding. 



In the third place, we have hermaphrodites in abundance in the group which were 



' Philosophical Transactions,' lxix. 281. 



