150 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK II. mingled and well hardened with a little loamy earth and horse-dung 

 "^^'^^ newly made. 



Dr. Plot speaks of an Elm growing near the bowling-green at Mag- 

 dalen College, quite round disbarked, almost for a yard near the ground, 

 which yet flourishes exceedingly ; upon which, he dilates into an accurate 



only a receptacle : so that also the Hop, Mulberry, Strawberry, and Elite, can produce 

 fruit, though their seeds do not ripen, because their fruit is nothing but a receptacle or 

 calyx. Some botanists, who were ignorant of this, seeing those trees produce fruit without 

 previous impregnation, thought they had found an unanswerable argument against the 

 generation of plants ; but they did not consider that the fruit of the Fig is not a seed- 

 vessel, but a common receptacle. Yet it appears, that the fruit of the Fig, if the seeds are 

 impregnated, grow to a much larger size than those which are not; which Tournefort 

 also observed; for he tells us, that a Fig-tree, in Franche Compte, where there is no 

 caprification, produced every year only twenty-five pound weight of figs ; but that another 

 of the same size in one of the islands of the Archipelago, produced yearly two hundred and 

 eighty pound weight of figs, which is above ten times the quantity of the other. This 

 age hath clearly refuted the opinion of Camerarius, who maintained that the seeds of figs 

 never produced any plants. For Linnaeus tells, that Fig-trees are raised every year in 

 Holland from the seeds, provided the fruit is brought from Italy. But if the fruit grew 

 in France, England, Germany, or Sweden, where there are no Wild Figs, the seeds 

 produce nothing ; on the other hand, if those seeds are sown, which grew in Italy or the 

 Greek islands, where the male Fig abounds, the plants readily spring up, putting forth 

 leaves, which at first are like those of the Mallow. The same experiment was tried with 

 good success in the Upsal garden in the year 1744. I shall now mention the utility 

 of insects in the fecundation of plants. In a great many flowers, there is a honey-juice, 

 separated by the flower, which Pontedera thinks is that balsam which the seeds imbibe, 

 to make them keep and preserve their vegetative quality longer ; and as long as the 

 balsam is not dried up or spoiled, so long the seeds are fit to germinate. Several insects, as 

 bees, flies, butterflies, live on this honey-juice only. Quinlilian, the Roman orator, has 

 a very singular case in one of his Orations : " A poor man and a rich man," says he, 

 " had two small adjoining gardens. The rich man had many fine flowers in his garden, 

 and the poor man had bees in his. The rich man complained that his flowers were 

 spoiled by the poor man's bees, which he warned him to remove. The poor man not 

 complying, the other scattered poison on his flowers ; on which the poor man's bees 

 all died ; and Dives is guilty of this great injury. The poor man pleads that the bees did 

 no hurt at all to the rich man's flovvei's ; that neither the Creator, nor any human laws, had 

 ever restrained bees within any certain limits ; and, therefore, the rich man might hinder 

 the bees from settling on his flowers if he could." But the other might have objected, 

 that the bees were so far hurtful to his flowers, that they sucked the honey-juice, and 

 carried off the fertilizing dust. After all, it is probable that the bees are more useful than 

 hurtful to flowers, since, by their unwearied labours, they spread the fertilizing dust, so that 



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