ON GENERATION. 515 



be said that as they avow the semen to be a derivative 

 from all parts else, we believe the semen to be disposed 

 of itself to form every part ; and whilst they call it a colliqua- 

 ment, we are rather inclined to regard it as an excrement" 

 (he had, however, said shortly before that he entitled excrement 

 the remains of the nourishment, and colliquament that which 

 is secreted from the growth by a preternatural resolution) ; " for 

 that which arrives last, and is the excrement of what is final, 

 is in all probability of the same nature ; in the same way as 

 painters have very commonly some remains of colours, which 

 are identical with those they have applied upon their canvass ; 

 but anything that is consuming and melting away is corrupt 

 and degenerate. Another argument that the seminal fluid is 

 not a colliquament, but an excrement, is this : that animals of 

 larger growth are less prolific, smaller creatures more fruitful. 

 Now there must be a larger quantity of colliquament in larger 

 than in smaller animals, but less excrement ; for as there must 

 be a large consumption of nourishment in a large body, so 

 must there be a small production of excrement. Farther, 

 there is no place provided by nature for receiving and storing 

 colliquament ; it flows off by the way that is most open to it ; 

 but there are receptacles for all the natural excrements the 

 bowels for the dry excrements, the bladder for the moist ; the 

 stomach for matters useful ; the genital organs, the uterus, the 

 mammse for seminal matter in which several places they col- 

 lect and run together." After this he goes on by a variety of 

 arguments to prove that the seminal matter from which the 

 foetus is formed is the same as that which is prepared for the 

 nutrition of the parts at large. As if, should one require 

 some pigment from a painter, he certainly would not go to 

 scrape off what he had already laid on his canvass, but would sup- 

 ply the demand from his store, or from what he had over from 

 his work, which was still of the same nature as that which he 

 might have taken away from his picture. So and in like 

 manner the excrement of the ultimate nutriment, or the re- 

 mainder of the gluten and dew, is carried to the genital organs 

 and there deposited ; and this view is most accordant with the 

 production of eggs by the hen. 



The medical writers, too, who hold all the parts to be origi- 

 nally formed from the spermatic fluid, and consequently speak 



