an ancient people of Sarmatia Europæa, inhabiting the eastern banks of the river Tanais, near its opening into the Palus Maeotis; thus called, as authors relate, because they had no women among them; or rather because they were under the dominion of women. The word is formed of γυνή, woman, and ἐκτροπεύω, vanquished, of ἐκτροπή, I overcome, q. d. overcome by women.

Fa. Hardouin, in his notes on Pliny, says, they were thus called, because, after a battle which they lost against the Amazons, on the banks of the Thermodon, they were obliged to have venereal commerce with them, in order to get them children; et quid victricibus obsequantur ad procurandam eis sobolem.—Hardouin calls them the husbands of the Amazons, Amazonum connubia; for, as the author observes, the word unde must be retrenched from Pliny, having been foisted into the text by people who were not masters of the author's meaning, unde Amazonum connubia. See AMAZONS. They who take the Amazons for a fabulous people, will conclude the same of the Gynaccratumenians.

GYNANDRIA, (from γυνή, a "woman;" and ἀνδρός, a "man;") the name of the 20th class in Linnæus's sexual system, consisting of plants with hermaphrodite flowers, in which the stamens are placed upon the style, or pillar-shaped receptacle resembling a style, which rises in the middle of the flower, and bears both the stamens and stigma; that is, both the supposed organs of generation. See BOTANY, p. 65.

The flowers of this class, says Linnæus, have a monstrous appearance, arising, as he imagines, from the singular and unusual situation of the parts of fructification.