416 GENERATION. SECT. XXXIX. 7. 8, 



nation from the currents of air, which it muft now continue 

 perpetually to refpire to the end of its life ; as it now quits the 

 liquid element, in which it was produced, and like the tadpole, 

 when it changes into a frog, becomes an aerial animal. 



9. As the habitable parts of the earth have been, and con* 

 tinue to be, perpetually increafing by the production of fea- 

 fhells and corallines, and by the recrements pf other animals, 

 and vegetables ; fo from the beginning of the exiitence of this 

 terraqueous globe, the animals, which inhabit it, have coniiant- 

 3y improved, and are (till in a ftate of progrefTive improvement. 



This idea of the gradual generation of all things feems to 

 have been as familiar to the ancient philofophers as to the mod- 

 ern ones j and to have given rife to the beautiful hieroglyphic 

 figure of the K^rovem or firfi great egg, produced by NIGHT, 

 that is, whofe origin, is involved in obfcurity, and animated by 

 S g5, that is, by DIVINE LOVE ^from whence proceeded all things 

 which exift. 



Appendix. 



VIII. i. Since the former publication of the preceding Sec- 

 tion on Generation, I have been induced in my treatife on Phyt- 

 ologia, to give more attention to the lateral or folitary genera- 

 tion of vegetables in the production of their buds, hoping from 

 thence to throw ibme light on their fexual generation in the pro- 

 duction of feeds ; and in confequence on the propagation of 

 more perfect animals, which I (hall here relate, believing that 

 it may intereft the philosophical reader, obferving only, that by 

 the vegetable facts here attended to, I am now induced to be- 

 lieve, that the embryons of complicate animal and vegetable 

 bodies are not formed from a fingle filament as above delivered ; 

 but that their ftructure commences in many parts at the fame 

 time, though it is probable, that the moft fimple or firft exordi- 

 um of animation was begun by a fingle filament, and continues 

 to do fo in the fpontaneous production of the fmallelt njicro- 

 fcopic animals, which do not appear to have been generated 

 by other animalcula fimilar to themfelves, as further fpoken of 

 in No. ii. 5. or this Section. 



i. It is Ihewn at large in the work above mentioned, that 

 every bud of a'tree is an individual vegetable, and confifts of the 

 plumulaor leaf at its fummit, of a long caudex extending from 

 this fummit downwards to the earth, forming a filament of the 

 bark, and laftly of radicles beneath the foil : it is alfo fhewn, 

 that every bud pofTefles the power of germination or reproduc- 

 tion, not only in the axilla of the leaf, which is moft common, 



but 



