16 



found eggs in the ovaries of every female that came tin* 

 cler their notice, often to the number of more than 

 twenty in each ovary, and of the size of a green pea. 

 They draw another of their arguments from the ana. 

 logy that nature every wl ere observes in all her ope- 

 rations, and particularly in the production of plants 

 and animals INow if this system deservedly confers 

 glory on the invm or of it, it is but just that he 

 should have it who is best entitled to it; and he to 

 whom it appears primarily due, is without doubt 

 Empedocles, and next to him Hippocrates, Aristotle, 

 and Macrobius. 



4. Plutarch relating the different opinions of philo.- 

 sophers, as to the generation of animals and produc- 

 tions of plants, says, that Empedocles thought they 

 were all of them at first irregular and imperfect, but 

 acquired afterwards such a just form as distinguished 

 them in shape and species from one another. And he 

 concludes with saying, that animals are not produced, 

 like earth and water, from homogenous bodies, but 

 generate one another by the mixture of the sexes, and 

 liHe plants derive the principle of their origin from the 

 particular seeds or eggs. This is the very same which 

 Aristotle intended to indicate as the doctrine of Empe- 

 docles, when he introduces him as saying, u That 

 -whatever was born, was born of a particular seed;" 

 and as calling the seeds of plants their eggs, which fall 

 of themselves when they are come to maturity. 



5. Herodotus, who lived almost at the same time 

 with Empedocles, relating that a land adjoining to the 

 Nile had produced a great quantity of fish, gives a na- 

 tural reason for it, upon the principles of Empedocles. 

 <'What seems to me," says he, " to have been the cause 

 of this vast increase of fish, is this ; during the time of 

 the Nile's overflowing, the fishes having left in the 

 mud of its borders a prodigious quantity of sperm or 

 eggs, these disclose themselves after its retreat, cover- 

 ing the land with a multitude of fish.'' 



