ON GENERATION. 423 



stomach. The omentum, or apron, floated over the intestines 

 at large like a thin and transparent veil or cloud. 



The kidneys at this epoch are not yet formed into a smooth 

 and continuous rounded mass, as in the adult, but are com- 

 pacted of numerous smaller masses, as we see them in the calf 

 and sturgeon, as if there were a renal globule or nipple placed 

 at the extremity of each division of the ureter, from the orifice 

 of which the urine distilled. Over the kidneys two bodies, first 

 observed by Eustachius, are discovered, very abundantly sup- 

 plied with blood, so that their veins, which anatomists designate 

 as venae adiposse, are not much smaller than the emulgents 

 themselves. The liver and spleen, according to their several 

 proportions, are equally full of blood. 



I may here observe, by the way, that in every strong and 

 healthy human foetus we everywhere discover milk ; it is parti- 

 cularly abundant in the thymus gland, though it is also found 

 in the pancreas, through the whole of the mesentery, and in 

 certain lacteal veins and glands, as it seems, situated between 

 the divisions of the mesenteric vessels. Moreover, it can be 

 pressed and indeed sometimes flows spontaneously from the 

 breasts of newly -born infants, and nurses imagine that this is 

 beneficial to the infant. 



And it clearly appears that this fluid, which abounds in the 

 ovum, is no excrementitious matter thrown off by the embryo, 

 nothing like urine or sweat, because its relative quantity is 

 diminished as the period of parturition approaches, when the 

 foetus is of course larger, and, as it consumes a greater quantity 

 of nutriment, accumulates excrementitious matter more abun- 

 dantly than it did in the first months of pregnancy. Let it 

 be added, that the bladder is at this time distended with urine. 

 For my own part I have never been able to discover that con- 

 duit for the urine, from the bladder to the umbilicus, which 

 anatomists describe under the name of urachus ; I have, on the 

 contrary, frequently seen urine escaping by the penis, but never 

 by any urachus, when the bladder was pressed upon with the 

 hand. 



So much for what I have observed with reference to the 

 order of the parts in the development of the human foetus. 



In the fourth and last process the parts of the lowest state 

 and order are produced, those, namely, that do not exist as 



