I SEMINAL VERMICULT, 23 
he can explain the great work of generation, and 
the moft infcrutable phenomena it prefents, and 
employs all that powerful and perfuafive elo- 
quence which charaGerifes him as the orator of 
the age. Prejudiced in favour of his theory, it 
was not difficult for him to find it in nature. 
His views were lefs directed to fee what aCtually 
exifted than to what he wifhed to find ; not 
otherwife than his celebrated countryman, the re- 
former of botany, who fancied that-metals and 
{tones vegetated, and thought he had evidence 
of this imaginary vegetation, that he faw feeds 
and plants where there were none. If this 
learned academician, who has ever pofiefled my 
full efteem, will take the trouble to repeat his ex- 
periments on the femen of man and animals, with 
better microfcopes, and, forgetting his favourite 
organic molecules, impofe a rule on himfelf to re- 
ceive as truth nothing but the images tranfmitted by 
the fenfes, without adding the corrections of ima- 
gination, as is the duty of a veracious naturalift ; 
I can affure him he will find all that I have wit- 
neffed a thoufand times, and defcribed fo largely 
in my works. I earneftly entreat him not to 
rejet this without a trial, which muft certainly 
refult to the advantage of truth. 
_ I now mean to examine Buffon’s obje@tions in- 
tended to prove that the living beings feen in {per- 
matic fluids are not real animals. Some of them 
B4 hava 
