ON GENERATION. 249 



it appears, and it is thence nourished and made to increase ; in 

 the same way as mouldiness grows in moist places, in the dark 

 corners of houses which long escape cleansing ; or, like camphor 

 upon cedar wood tables, and moss upon rocks and the bark of 

 trees ; lastly, as a kind of delicate down grows upon certain grubs. 



Upon the same occasion I also debated with myself whether 

 or not I should conclude, that with the coagulation of the col- 

 liquament accomplished, the rudiments of the head and body 

 existed simultaneously with the punctum saliens and the blood, 

 but in a pellucid state, and so delicate that they almost escaped 

 the eye, until becoming inspissated into a fungus or mucor, 

 they acquired a more opaque white colour, and then came into 

 view ; the blood meantime from its greater spissitude and purple 

 colour being readily perceptible in the diaphanous colliqua- 

 ment. But now when I look at the thing more narrowly, I am 

 of opinion that the blood exists before any particle of the body 

 appears ; that it is the first-born of all the parts of the embryo ; 

 that from it both the matter out of which the foetus is embo- 

 died, and the nutriment by which it grows are derived ; that it 

 is in fine, if such thing there be, the primary generative par- 

 ticle. But wherefore I am led to adopt this idea shall after- 

 wards be shown more at length when I come to treat of the 

 primary genital part, of the innate heat, and the radical mois- 

 ture ; and, at the same time, conclude as to what we are to 

 think of the vital principle (anima), from a great number of 

 observations compared with one another. 



About this period almost every hour makes a difference ; every 

 thing grows larger, more definite and distinct; the rate of change 

 in the egg is rapid, and one change succeeds immediately upon 

 the back of another. The cavity in the egg is now much larger, 

 and the whole of its upper portion is empty ; it is as if a fifth 

 part of the egg had been removed. 



The ramifications of the veins extend more widely, and are 

 more numerous, not only in the colliquament as before, but 

 they spread on one hand into the abumen, and on the other 

 into the yelk, so that both of these fluids are everywhere co- 

 vered over with blood-vessels. The upper portion of the yelk 

 has now become much dissolved, so that it very obviously differs 

 from the lower portion ; there are now, as it were, two yelks, 

 or two kinds of yelk ; whilst the superior, like melted wax, is 



