if. SEMINAL VERMICULT. va 
occafion fuch a difference in the phenomena, I 
determined to refolve my doubts by taking the 
trouble to make a new courfe of experiments on 
human femen and that of other animals. But not- 
with{tanding all my care, precautions, and all pof- 
fible vigilance, I could difcover nothing new, at 
leaft effentially affecting the fa@s I have fpoken of. 
Yet, with reflection on Buffon’s obfervations, and 
the repetition of my own, I could not reproach 
him with feeing what did not exift. I thought 
the whole might be an equivocal effe@t, which 
deemed the more likely, as the phenomena which 
he fays he obferved in feminal vermiculi might be 
occafioned by beings of a very different nature. 
My experiments on infufions fuggefted it. I had 
remarked, that there is no part of an animal in- 
fufed that does not give exiftence to a particular 
kind of animalcula. They are produced indiffer- 
ently by the mufcles, brain, nerves, membranes, 
tendons, veins, and arteries ; alfo by the blood, 
ferum, milk, chyle, or faliva, mixed with water 
or even by themfelves. I had not yet made ex- 
periments on human femen for a fimilar purpofe, 
but it was moft probable that the putrefation of 
it would give exiltence to particular beings: and 
who knows, faid I to myfelf, that they have not 
inadvertently been confounded with feminal ver- 
miculi, and that M. de Buffon has afcribed to the 
latter the properties and phenomena exhibited by 
A 4 the 
