The Plaintain tree (_Musa_) bears two kinds of hermaphrodite flowers; some have imperfect antheræ, others only the rudiments of stigmata; as the last mentioned kind appear after the others, they cannot impregnate them, consequently no seeds are produced in our gardens, and scarcely ever on the plants cultivated in India. An event happened this year, which I have long wished for; two plaintain-trees flowering with me so fortunately that one of them brought forth its first female blossoms at the time that male ones began to appear on the other. I eagerly ran to collect antheræ from the first plant, in order to scatter them over the newly-expanded females, in hopes of obtaining seed from them, which no botanist has yet been able to do. But when I came to examine the antheræ I found even the largest of them absolutely empty and void of pollen, consequently unfit for impregnating the females; the seeds of this plant, therefore, can never be perfected in our gardens. I do not doubt, however, that real male plants of this species may be found in its native country, bearing flowers without fruit, which the gardeners have neglected; while the females in this country produce imperfect fruit, without seeds, like the female fig; and, like that tree, are increased easily by suckers. The fruit, therefore, of the plaintain-tree scarcely attains anything like its due size, the larger seed-buds only ripening, without containing anything in them. The day would sooner fail me than examples. A female date-bearing palm flowered many years at Berlin, without producing any seeds. But the Berlin people taking care to have some of the blossoms of the male tree, which was then flowering at Leipsic, sent them by the post, they obtained fruit by that means; and some dates, the offspring of this impregnation, being planted in my garden, sprung up, and to this day continue to grow vigorously. Kœmpfer formerly told us how necessary it was found by the oriental people, who live upon the produce of palm-trees, and are the true Lotophagi, to plant some male trees among the females, if they hoped for any fruit; hence, it is the practice of those who make war in that part of the world to cut down all the male palms, that a famine may afflict their proprietors; sometimes even the inhabitants themselves destroy the male trees, when they dread an invasion, that their enemies may find no sustenance in the country. Leaving these instances, and innumerable others, which are so well known to botanists that they would by no means bear the appearance of novelty, and can only be doubted by those persons who neither have observed nature, nor will they take the trouble to study her, I pass to a fresh subject, concerning which much new light is wanted; I mean hybrid, or mule vegetables, the existence and origin of which we shall now consider. I shall enumerate three or four real mule plants, to whose origin I have been an eye-witness.