PREFACE. 
xxi 
which muft unavoidably happen on many 
accounts, but particularly becaufe thofe 
natural hiftorians who had been brought 
up and inured to other fyftems, who 
for in fome plants there are many filaments to one piftil. 
This is polygamy. In others there are female flowers, 
which are impregnated by the duft of male flowers, 
which have other female flowers belonging to them, 
i. e. which are already married. This is plainly adul- 
tery. Now according to profeflor Siegefbec, it is not 
credible that fuch confufion and deteftable pollution 
fhould be tolerated in nature. 
Browellius rightly obferves in his anfwer, that Sie- 
gefbec had totally overlooked many inftances of thefe 
enormities in the animal kingdom, and even the immo- 
rality of farmers and their wives, fhepherds, jockies, 
fportfmen, nay even ladies of reputation, who in their 
ways promote thefe immoral and indecent practices. 
However it mud: be obferved in favor of this very 
fcrupulous profefior, that- fyftems of philofophy, founded 
on fadls have, been anathematifed, and the authors 
and favorers of them condemned to the fevereft pu- 
nifhments, for reafons as little to the purpofe as the 
• foregoing of Siegefbec. To quote inftances would be 
endlefs, as every one the leaft: conversant in the hiftory 
of learning will eafily recoiled them. But fo moderate 
is the world now become, that I do not hear that the 
Linnaean fyftem is looked on as heretical even at the 
court of Rome, though the profeffor has drawn fome 
ffcrewd arguments againft it from the book of Genefts. 
a 3 had. 
