386 GENERATION. Sect. XXXIX. 3. 2. 



of the various and complicate parts of animal bodies : they mud 

 poffefs a much greater degree of minutenefs, than that which 

 was afcribed to the devils that tempted St. Anthony ; of whom 

 20,000 were faid to have been able to dance a faraband on the 

 point of the flneft needle without incommoding each other. 



2. Others have fuppofed, that all the parts of the embryon are 

 formed in the male, previous to its being depofited in the egg or 

 uterus ; and that it is then only to have its parts evolved or dif- 

 tended as mentioned above ; but this is only to get rid of one 

 difficulty by propofmg another equally incomprehenfible : they 

 found it difficult to conceive, how the embryon could be formed 

 in the uterus or egg, and therefore wifhed it to be formed before 

 it came thither. In anfwer to both thefe doctrines it may be ob- 

 ferved, ift. that fome animals, as the crab-fifh, can reproduce 

 a whole limb, as a leg which has been broken off; others, as 

 worms and fnails, can reproduce a head, or a tail, when either 

 of them has been cut away •, and that hence in thefe animals at 

 lead a part can be formed anew, which cannot be fuppofed to 

 have exifted previoufly in miniature. 



Secondly, there are new parts or new veflels produced in 

 many difeafes, as on the cornea of the eye in ophthalmy, in wens 

 and cancers, which cannot be fuppofed to have had a prototype 

 or original miniature in the embryon. 



Thirdly, how could mule-animals be produced, which partake 

 of the forms of both the parents, if the original embryon was a 

 miniature exifting in the femen of the male parent ? if an em- 

 bryon of the male afs was only expanded, no refemblance to the 

 mare could exifl in the mule. 



This miftaken idea of the extenfion of parts feems to have had 

 its rife from the mature man refembling the general form of the 

 fetus ; and from thence it was believed, that the parts of the 

 fetus were diftended into the man ; whereas they have increafed 

 100 times in weight, as well as 100 times in fize ; now no one 

 will call the additional ninety-nine parts a diflention of the 

 original one part in refpecl: to weight. Thus the uterus during 

 pregnancy is greatly enlarged in thicknefs and folidity as well as 

 in capacity, and hence muft have acquired this additional fize 

 by accretion of new parts, not by an extenfion of the old ones ; 

 the familiar ac~t, of blowing up the bladder of an animal recently 

 Slaughtered has led our imaginations to apply this idea of dis- 

 tention to the increafe of fize from natural growth ; which 

 however muft be owing to the appofition of new parts; as it is 

 evinced from the increafe of weight along with the increafe of 

 dimenfion ; and is even vifible to our eyes in the elongation of 

 our hair from the cojpur of its ends ; <>r when it has been dyed 



on 



