94 OF REPRODUCTION. 



to this common conclusion, to wit, that the union of germs takes 

 place in the ovary, and that the development of the product of 

 fecundation is a simple evolution, and not an epigenisis, as was for- 

 merly maintained. 



234. Nevertheless, the doctrine of epigenisis has never been 

 wholly abandoned; Maupertuis still defended it in his Venus Phy- 

 sique, published in 1754, asserting that the seed of the two sexes is 

 formed of particles that are never commingled save in the womb, 

 just as certain chemical elements mutually attract and combine with 

 each other. Buffon was even very near reviving it, by presenting 

 it in a new light: this celebrated writer supposed that at the moment 

 when the venereal enjoyment was at its greatest height, there were 

 separated from every portion of the body, and of the two conjoined 

 bodies at the same moment, a determinate number of organic mole- 

 cules; that each of these molecules possessed a figure proportioned 

 to the part of the body from whence it was disengaged, but which 

 are similar in the two sexes; that having reached the uterus, all the 

 similar molecules are mutually attracted towards each other, so that, 

 for example, those that were furnished by the eye, the nose, the ear, 

 or the arm, the lung, or the heart, or finger of the woman, can only 

 combine with the molecules from the eye, nose, ear, arm, lung, heart 

 or finger of the man. 



235. Not one of these opinions is wholy destitute of foundation; 

 not one but has been defended with talent, and combated by very 

 good arguments; none without its partisans and antagonists; but the 

 nature of this work not admitting of my entering into very long de- 

 tails so as to exhibit the just value of each of these doctrines, I shall 

 leave the subject with what has been above said. 



236. Reproduction, in those beings that occupy a high grade on 

 the zoological scale, is an extremely complex act; in order to a 

 good understanding of it as a whole, it ought to be analysed, in some 

 measure, in the several gradations of the animal kingdom. In the first 

 place, it is proper to remark, that the words reproduction, generation, 

 fecundation, conception, have each a distinct grammatical accepta- 

 tion, and it is wrong to employ them as synonymes, especially when 

 speaking of mammiferous animals. The word reproduction, for ex- 

 ample, is applicable to the whole function, while generation ought 

 to be understood as meaning the simple creation of germs; the term 

 fecundation, in its turn, only expresses the act which unites the two 



germs, or by which one of these germs vivifies the other; the word 

 conception, which signifies to retain, can only be reasonably employ- 

 ed to designate the action which causes the fecundated germ to be 

 retained within the sexual organs; lastly, the word reproduction is 



