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Show ADDITIONAL NOTES. X. EVE FROM ADAM'S RIB. Form'd a new sex, the mother of mankind. CANTO. II. 1. 140. TuE mosaic history of Paradise and of Adam and Eve has been thought by some to be a sacred allegory, designed to teach obedience to divine commands, and to account for the origin of evil, like J otham's fable of the trees; Judges ix. 8. or Nathan's fable of the poor man and his lamb; 2 Sam. xii. 1. or like the parables in the New Testament; as otherwise knowledge could not be said to grow upon one tree, and life upon another, or a serpent to converse; and la tly · that this account originated with the magi or philosophers of Egypt, with whom Moses was educated, and that this part of the history, where Eve is said to have been made from a rib of Adam might have been an hieroglyphic design of the Egyptian philosophers, showing their opinion that Mankind was originally of both sexes united, and was afterwards divided into males and females: an opinion in later times held by Plato, and I believe by Aristotle, and which must have arisen from profound inquiries into the original state of animal existence. 43 ADDITIONAL NOTES. XI. HEREDITARY DISEASES. The feeble births acquired di eases chase, Till Death extinguish the degenerate race. CANTO II. 1. 165. A all tl~e familie both of plants and animals appear in a state of perpetual Improvement or degeneracy, it becomes a subject of importance to detect the causes of these mutations. The insects, which are not propagated by sexual intercourse are s~ few or so small, that no observations have been made on 'their d1sea es; but hereditary diseases are believed more to affect tl ffi . f . le o pnng o solitary than of sexual generation in respect to veO"etables. as those fruit ~rees, '~hich have for more than a century bee 0 n propa~ gatecl Ot~ ly by mgraftmg, and not from seeds, have been observed by lVIr. Kmght to be at this time so liable to canker, as not to be worth cultivation. From the same cause I suspect the degeneracy of some potatoes and of some strawberries to have arisen; where the curled leaf has appeared in the former, and barren flowers in the latter. This may arise from the progeny Ly solitary reproduction so much more exactly resembling the parent, as is well seen in ()'rafted trees compared with seedling ones; the fruit oftheformeralwa; resembling that of the parent tree, but not so of the latter. The grafted scion also accords with the branch of the tree from whence it was taken, in the time of its bearing fruit; for if a scion be taken from a bearing branch of a pea.r or apple tree, I believe, it will produce fruit even the next year, or that succeeding; that is, in the same time that it would have produced fruit, if it had continued growing on the parent tree; but if the parent pear or apple tree has been cut clown or headed, and scions are then taken from the young shoots of the stem, and ingrafted; I believe those grafted trees will continue to grow for ten or twelve years, before they bear fruit, almost as long as seedling trees, |
