3 86 GENERATION. SECT. XXXIX. 3. 2. 



of the various and complicate parts of animal bodies : they muft 

 poflefs a much greater degree of minutenefs, than that which 

 was afcribed to the devils that tempted St. Anthony , of whom 

 20,000 were faid to have been able to dance a faraband on the 

 point of the fined needle without incommoding each other. 



2. Others have fuppofed, that all the parts of the embryon are 

 formed in the male, previous to its being depofited in the egg 

 or uterus ; and that it is thep only to have its parts evolved or dif- 

 tended as mentioned above ;> but this is only to get rid of one 

 difficulty by propofing another equally incomprehenfible : they 

 found it difficult to conceive, how the embryon could be formed 

 in the uterus or egg, and therefore wiihed it to be formed before 

 it came thither. In anfwer to both thefe doftrines it may be ob- 

 ferved, ift, that fome animals, as the crab-fifh, can reproduce 

 a whole limb, as a leg which has been broken ofF^ others, as 

 worms and fnails, can reproduce a head, or a tail, when either 

 of them has been cut away ; and that hence in thefe animals at 

 leaft a part can be formed anew, which cannot be fuppofed to 

 have exifted previoufly in miniature. 



Secondly, there are new parts or new veflels produced in 

 many difeafes, as on the cornea of the eye in ophthalmy, in wens 

 and cancers, which cannot be fuppofed to have had a prototype 

 or original miniature in the embryon. 



Thirdly, how could mule-animals be produced, which partake 

 of the forms of both the parents, if the original embryon was a 

 miniature exifting in the femen of the male parent ? if an em- 

 bryon of the male afs was only expanded, no refemblance to the 

 mare could exift in the mule. 



This miftaken idea of the extenfions of parts feem to have had 

 its rife from the mature man refembling the general form of the 

 fetus ; and from thence it was believed, that the parts of the 

 fetus were diftended into the man ; whereas they have increafed 

 100 times in weight, as well as 100 times in fize ; now no one 

 will call the additional ninety-nine parts a diftention of the 

 original one in refpeft to weight. Thus the uterus during 

 pregnancy is greatly enlarged in thicknefs and folidity as well as 

 in capacity, and hence muft have acquired this additional (ize 

 by accretion of new parts, not by an exrenfion of the old ones ; 

 the familiar at of blowing up the bladder of an animal recently 

 flaughtered has led our imaginations to apply this idea of dif- 

 tention to the increafe of fize from natural growth ; which 

 however muft be owing to the appofition of new parts ; as it is 

 evinced from the increafe of weight along with the increafe of 

 dimenfion , and is even vifible to our eyes in the elongation of 

 our hair from the colour of its ends j or when it has been died 



on 



