HERMAPHRODITE, a term formerly applied exclusively to signify a human creature possessed of both sexes. The term is now applied to other animals, and to plants. It is now well known there is no such thing as an hermaphrodite in the human species. In most species of ani Mal.% the production of hermaphrodites appears to be the effect of causes little understood. In the black cattle it seems to be an established principle of their propagation. It is a well known fact, and, as far as has yet been discovered, appears to be universal, that when a cow brings forth two calves, one of them a bull, and the other a coy: to appearance, the cow is unfit for propagation, but the bull-calf becomes a very proper bull:" They are known not to breed ; they do not shew the least inclination for the bull, nor does the bull ever take the least notice of them. Among the country people in England, this kind of calf is called a free-martin ; and this singularity is just as well known among the farmers as either cow or bull. When they are preserved, it is for the purposes of an ox or spayed heifer ; viz. to yoke with the oxen, or fatten for the table. They are much larger than either the bull or cow, and the horns grow longer and bigger, being very similar to those of an ox. The bellow of a free martin is also similar to that of an ox, and the meat is similar to that of the ox or spayed heifer, viz. much finer in the fibre than either the bull or cow, and they are more susceptible of growing fat with good food.
Among the reptile tribe, indeed, such as worms, snails, leeches, &c. hermaphro dites are very frequent. In the memoirs of the French Academy, we have an account of this very extraordinary kind of her maphrodites, which not only have both sexes, but do the office of both at the same time. Such are earth-worms, round tailed worms found in the intestines of men and horses, land-snails, and those of fresh waters, and all the sorts of leeches. The method of coupling practised in this class of hermaphrodites may be illustrat ed in the instance of earth-worms. These little creatures creep two by two, out of their holes of the earth, where they dis pose their bodies in such a manner, as that the head of the one is turned to the tail of the other. Being thus stretched
lengthwise, a little conical button, or pa pilla, is thrust forth by each, and receiv ed into an aperture of the other, these animals being male in one part of the bo dy and female in another.
Among the insects of the soft or bone less kind, there are great numbers in 'deed, which are so far from being herma phrodites, that they are of no sex at all. Of this kind are all the caterpillars, mag gots, and worms, hatched from the eggs of flies of all kinds. But the reason of this is plain; these are not animals in a per feet state, but disguises under which ani mals lurk. They have no business with the propagating of their species, but are to be transformed into animals of another kind, by the putting off their several cov erings ; and then only they are in their perfect state, and, therefore, then only show the differences of sex, which are al ways in the distinct animals, each being only male or female. These copulate, and their eggs produce those creatures which show no sex till they arrive at that perfect state again.
ILERMAPKRODITfifiowers, in botany, are so called on account of their containing both the anthem and stigma, the sup posed organs of generation, within the same calyx and petals. Of this kind are the flowers of all the classes in Linnzus's method, except the classes Monoecia and Dioecia ; in the former of which male and female flowers are produced on the same root ; in the latter, in dis tinct plants from the same seed. In the class Polygamia, there are always hermaphrodite flowers mixed with male or female, or both, either on the same or distinct roots. In the plaintain-tree the flowers are all hermaphrodite ; in some, however, the anthem, or male or gan, in others the stigma, or female or gan, proves abortive. The flowers in the former class are styled female herma phrodites, in the latter male hermaphro dites. Hermaphrodites are thus as fre quent in the vegetable kingdom as they are rare and scarce in the animal one.