1? 



6. Hippocrates, speaking of the formation of an in- 

 fant, describes a foetus six days old, comparing it 4fc to 

 a, raw egg without the shell, round and full of a red 

 transparent liquor." In another place he shews, "how 

 the sam<3 thing happens in the generation of an infant, 

 as in the production of a plant." He says, " that 

 nature is always the same, acting uniformly in the 

 generation of men, and of plants, and of every thing 

 else." 



7. Aristotle, with still more precision, describes the 

 egs containing the fretus ; he says, u that all animals 

 engender and conceive first a kind of egg, containing a 

 liquor enveloped in a membrane or thn skin, resem- 

 fciing that of an egg-shell. " This, in another place, he 

 plainly calls an egg; out of one part of which, he 

 says, " the foetus is produced ; that is, out of the 

 yolk, whilst the white parfy which is the other ; serves 

 to nourish it.'* 



8. Nothing can be more clear than what Macrobius 

 proiinmicpg on this subject, who positively avers that 

 of all kinds of animals who copulate, an egg is the first 

 principle of thuir generation ; and in another place, 

 that the egg is the solution or expansion of the seed. 



0- The sysfem of animalcules or spermatic vermi- 

 culi has hindered that of generation by the means of 

 eggs, from gaining ihe unanimous su fir age of the na- 

 turalists. M. de Plautades, secretary of the academy 

 ofMoutpcliLT, was the first among the moderns who 

 renewed this conjecture of the ancients. Lewenhoek 

 and others confirmed this conjecture, by observations 

 so accurate, that they divided the sentiments of natu- 

 ralists between their own opinion of men's proceeding 

 from spermatic animalcula ; and that of Hervey, which 

 derives all generation from eggs. We have already seen 

 that this latter opinion sprung from Hippocrates, Ari- 

 stotle, &c. And the other, of the existence of sper- 

 matic vermiculi, is as clearly taught by Plato, Hip* 



