[ 88 ] 



when we recoiled that nature is infinite in her refources, which 

 are admirable even in her moft excentric deviations from her 

 common paths. 



It is a curious fubjed to enquire into how long nature will 

 preferve a foetus in its mother's belly, without creating any other 

 inconvenience than what arifes from carrying about the burthen. 



The celebrated Bayle, profeffor at Touloufe in 1678, has 

 handed down to us the hiftory of a woman who carried her 

 child for twenty-fix years ; and Thuanus, the great hiftorian, 

 (Hiftoriarum, lib. Ixxvi. cap. x.) relates the cafe of the wife 

 of one Lewis Carita, a taylor, whofe child remained in her 

 belly twenty-eight years; and Monfieur Morand, in French 

 Memoirs for the year 17+8, page 118, gives us an account of a 

 child which remained in its mother's belly for thirty-one years. 

 But there is a cafe quoted by Morand which happened at Leinzell 

 in Suabia, where the child was in the mother's belly for forty- 

 fix years, the mother having lived to the age of ninety-fix, and 

 having borne two children in the mean time. Dr. Middleton 

 laid before the Royal Society the cafe of a woman who carried 

 her child in her belly for fixteen years, and during that time 

 bore four children, all alive. 



