2l6 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



"Many ingenious philosophers have fouiid so great 

 difficulty in conceiving the manner of the reproduction 

 of animals, that they have supposed all the numerous 

 progeny to have existed in miniature in the animal 

 originally created; and that these infinitely minute 

 forms are only evolved or distended, as the embryon 

 increases in the womb. This idea, besides its being 

 unsupported by any analogy we are acquainted with, 

 ascribes a greater tenuity to organized matter than we 

 can readily admit; as these included embryons are 

 supposed each of them to consist of the various and 

 complicate parts of animal bodies, they must possess 

 a much greater degree of minuteness than that which 

 was ascribed to the devils which tempted St. Anthony, 

 of whom 20,000 were said to have been able to dance a 

 saraband on the point of the finest needle without in- 

 commoding one another." * 



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"I conceive the primordium or rudiment of the 

 embryon as secreted from the blood of the parent to 

 consist of a simple living filament as a muscular fibre ; 

 which I suppose to be an extremity of a nerve of loco- 

 motion, as a fibre of the retina is an extremity of a 

 nerve of sensation ; as, for instance, one of the fibrils 

 which compose the mouth of an absorbent vessel. I 

 suppose this living filament of whatever form it may 

 be, whether sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endued 

 with the capability of being excited into action by 

 certain kinds of stimulus. By the stimulus of the 

 surrounding fluid in which it is received from the male 



* ' Zoonomia,' vol. L p. 494. 



