( 226 ) 
therefore, muft have lived near a hundred 
years before Ariftotle, who was born about 
the 98th Olympiad. I dare fay you remem- 
ber to have read, that this Empedocles threw 
himfelf headlong into ^Etna, that the world 
might believe he was a God. He certainly 
convinced the world that he was a fool. 
Ariftotle exprefles fome doubt of this new 
doctrine of vegetable generation, yet he tells 
us, that, if the duft of a branch from the 
male Palm-tree be fliook over the female, 
her fruit will foon ripen. 
Theophraftus, the difciple of Ariftotle, ob- 
ferves, that the chief diftinclion among trees 
is their gender, male and female. 
Diofcorides and Pliny, both fpeak of male 
and female plants, but without precife ideas 
of either. Caefalpinus obferved the differ- 
ence of fex in the Ciafs of plants which 
Linnaeus has fince called Dioecice. But Za- 
luzianjkl> a native of Poland, who, I believe, 
wrote at the latter end of the i6th, or be- 
ginning of the i 7th century, appears to 
have been the firft botanift who diftinguifh- 
ed the fexes of plants in their various modes 
of males, females, hermaphrodites, and an- 
drogyna. \ I : 
Many years after this, pur countryman 
*i Grew, 
