202 EMBRYOLOGY IN THE SEVENTEENTH [pt. ii 



illusion, since Nature could hardly be so prodigal, the animalculists 

 retorted by instancing such observations as that of Baster, who had 

 taken the trouble to count the eggs of a crab and had found that 

 they amounted to 12,444. James Cooke later elaborated a theory 

 of a world of the unborn to which the spermatozoa could retire 

 between each attempt to find a uterus in which they could develop — 

 this avoided Vallisneri's argument. "All those other attending 

 Animalcula, except that single one that is then conceived, evaporate 

 away, and return back into the Atmosphere again, whence it is very 

 likely they immediately proceeded; into the open Air, I say, the 

 common Receptacle of all such disengaged minute sublunary bodies; 

 and do there circulate about with other Semina, where, perhaps, 

 they do not absolutely die, but live a latent life, in an insensible or 

 dormant state, like Swallows in Winter, lying quite still like a stopped 

 Watch when let down, till they are received afresh into some other 

 Male body of the proper kind, to be again set on Motion, and ejected 

 again in Coition as before, to run a fresh chance for a lucky Con- 

 ception ; for it is very hard to conceive that Nature is so idly luxurious 

 of Seeds thus only to destroy them, and to make Myriads of them 

 subservient to but a single one." But Cooke's attractive hypothesis, 

 published in 1762, came too late, as Punnett says, to save the 

 animalculists. 



On the experimental side. Garden and Bourguet came forward 

 with descriptions of little men inside the animalcules, thus confirming 

 the work of Gautier and Hartsoeker. It is fair to add, however, that 

 Garden held quite enlightened views of the mutual necessity of egg 

 and spermatozoon. La Motte maintained that the egg (which he 

 identified with the Graafian follicle) was too big to go down the 

 Fallopian tube, and Sbaragli, another writer on the animalculist 

 side, agreed with him. 



Leeuwenhoek, it must be admitted, indulged in assertions no less 

 fantastic than those of his followers. He said there were spermatic 

 animalcules of both sexes, as one could see by a slight difference near 

 their tails, that they copulated, that the females became pregnant 

 and gave birth to little animalcules, that young and feeble ones could 

 be seen, that they shed their skins, and, finally, that some had been 

 observed with two heads. Haller, who made good use, on the whole, 

 of his strong vein of scepticism, characterised all these remarks as 

 "only conjectures". (See Fig. 12.) 



