This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1807 edition. Excerpt: ... dust of the anthers in its passage to the pointals3 by which they are fertilized; but nature, ever an (c)economist, makes no such arrangement among those trees which have narrow leaves, . such as the Fir or Yew. This is a remarkable instance of design, and clearly proves that all parts of creation, if properly observed, would furnish us with examples of the wisdom of an infinitely wise Creator, who not only formed every thing in the beginning, but has provided, in a wonderful manner, for their preservation and increase. With this serious reflection I shall conclude, wishing you all kinds of. happiness. FELICIA. LETTER XXVI. Dear Constance, Shrubbery, August 17. HE only distinction between the last class we have examined, and the twenty-second, wLich we are going to investigate, consists in the dispc--. sition of the respective kinds. of flowers. In the former class both kinds were produced on the same plant; but in this, Dioecia, they must be H 4 sought sought for on different plants of the same species. This will cost you some trouble, but we may re member my mother-s favourite maxim, that nothing is to be obtained without its proportion ot labour. The Willow belongs to the second order: the number of stamens is not always the same in the different species; in some there are three or five, of unequal length, and one kind produces complete flowers within the same empalement. Two is the number that distinguishes the order, and which generally prevails; the genus contains many species that concur in the following characters: each kind of flower grows on a scaled catkin, with a single flower in each scale, which has no corolla; die barren flowers have a very small, cylindrical, honied gland, placed in their centre; in those which are

In this fascinating study, Samantha George explores the cultivation of the female mind and the feminised discourse of botanical literature in eighteenth-century Britain. In particular, she discusses British women’s engagement with the Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus, and his unsettling discovery of plant sexuality. Previously ignored primary texts of an extraordinary nature are rescued from obscurity and assigned a proper place in the histories of science, eighteenth-century literature, and women’s writing. The result is groundbreaking: the author explores nationality and sexuality debates in relation to botany and charts the appearance of a new literary stereotype, the sexually precocious female botanist. She uncovers an anonymous poem on Linnaean botany, handwritten in the eighteenth century, and subsequently traces the development of a new genre of women’s writing — the botanical poem with scientific notes. The book is indispensable reading for all scholars of the eighteenth century, especially those interested in Romantic women’s writing, or the relationship between literature and science.