Chap. IX. A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. 225 



or bitch-fox, has never but one litter in tlie year, and, in that Tutor,. 

 hardly ever more ih 3.n Jivt' : Whereas the tame birch has oricn three 

 litters in the year. A gentleman told me lie had a l)itc]i who 

 had four in fourteen mcatlis ; and tlicv have co;nniopjy ei'.'-ht or 

 nine at a litter. 



Another example ot the fame kind the fpecies of hogs furniilies.- 

 The wild fow never has but one litter in the year, and I doubt 

 whether fhe has even that every year, and never above four or Civc 

 at a litter : Whereas the tame fow has commonly two litters in the 

 year ; and I have known one of them have feventeen at a litter, 

 (BufFon fays he knew one that had eighteen), and they begin to- 

 breed when they are no better than pigs^ 



And the reafon for this difference, betwixt procreation in the na- 

 tural and the houfed ftate, is the unnatural heat of the houle, and 

 the indolence in which the animal lives, having all the neceflaiies of 

 life furnifhed to him. This brings on an immature puberty, and pro- 

 vokes the female to defire the male much oftener than flie would do 

 otherwife ; and when this unnatural life is carried fo much farther,, 

 as it is among men, we fee what the confcquence of it is with re- 

 fped to our females *. 



As there is a great refemblance betwixt the vegetable and animal 



life, an unnatural heat has a fimilar eifedl upon the vegetable ; for a 



Vol. III. F f plant 



* See what Dean Swift has fald upon this fubje£l, in his Voyage to the Fauy- 

 hiihnmSt Chapter 7. where he has touched the fubjtd very delicately. This author 

 had not only more wit and humour than any man, I believe, that ever lived, but, I 

 think, was the beft philofopher of his age, though he has written nothing profef- 

 fedly upon philofophy ; and there is more pleafantry, ridicule, fatire, and, at the 

 fame time, fenfe and knowledge of men and manners, in his Gulliver's Travels, 

 than- is to be found altogether in any other work> antient or modern. 



