h ANIMALCULA OF INFUSIONS. 263 



tunately his memory has been very treacherous j 

 and he has lamed my chicken. 1 told him fo r 

 he faid it was true; and his cuftom, whether 

 good or bad, was to follow the train of his ideas. 

 I wrote to him again : ' You have not paid the 

 ' lead attention to the confequences immediately 

 ' flowing from the fades I mention. You have 

 ' overlooked them : but they require to be ana- 

 * lyfed. It is not in this manner that one fhould 

 ' treat fads.* I am no lefs fenfible of the ob- 

 liging and truly friendly things with which the 

 citation of which we fpeak is attended. 



This avowed partisan of Epigenefis incefTantly 

 jrefers us to what he calls the chain of bis reafon^ 

 ings. He feems not to fuppofe that it is a fpi- 

 der's web to catch flies. He almoft uniformly 

 draws certain Gonciufions from uncertain premif- 

 fesi The two fophifms into which he mofl fre- 

 quently fails, are the petitio trincipii and imperfeB 

 enumeration. Becaufe the decompofition of ve- 

 getable fubfliances produce particular filaments, 

 whence animalcula feem to proceed, he con- 

 ceives it demonfl:rated, that the animalcula, which 

 he calls zoophytes, are produced by the fila- 

 ments. Then, to account for this flrange pro- 

 du<^ion5 he imagines a vegetative pov/er, v/hich 

 he charges with the office of organizing or ani- 

 malizing. He endeavours to give us an idea of thfe 

 adlion of this force, by a comparifon with tlie 

 R 4 combined 



