s generally understood to signify a human creature possessed of both sexes, or who has the parts of generation of both male and female. The term however is also applied to other animals, and even to plants. The word is formed from the Greek Ἑρμαφρόδιτος, a compound of Ἑρμής, Mercury, and Ἀφροδίτη, Venus; a mixture of Mercury and Venus, or of male and female. Hermaphroditus was originally a proper name applied by the heathen mythologists to a fabulous deity, whom some represent as a son of Hermes, Mercury, and Aphrodite, Venus, and who, being desperately in love with the nymph Salamis, obtained permission of the god to have his body and hers united into one. But others say, that the god Hermaphroditus was conceived as a composition of Mercury and Venus; to exhibit the union between eloquence, or rather commerce, of which Mercury was god, with pleasure, of which Venus was the proper deity. Lastly, others think this junction intended to show that Venus or pleasure was of both sexes.

In a treatise by Mr Hunter, in the sixty-ninth volume of the Philosophical Transactions, hermaphrodites are divided into natural, and unnatural or monstrous. The first belongs to the more simple orders of animals, of which there are a much greater number than of the more perfect. The unnatural takes place in every tribe of animals having distinct sexes, but is more common in some than in others. The human species, our author imagines, has the fewest; but amongst horses, sheep, and black cattle, they are very frequent.