576 G E EjSL AT JO N. SECT. XXXIX. 4. 



peds, to which no ufe can now.be affigned, adds 

 perhaps forac fhadpw of probability to this opinion. 

 Linnaeus excepts the horfe from the male quadru- 

 peds, who have teats ; which might have Qiewn the 

 earlier origin of his exiftence ; but Mr. J. Hunter 

 aliens, that he has discovered the veftiges of them 

 jon his fheatb, and has at the fame time enriched 

 natural hiflory with a very curious fa& concerning 

 the male pigeon ; at the time of hatching the eggs 

 both the male and female pigeon undergo 3 great 

 change in their crops ; which thicken and become 

 corrugated, and fecrete a kind of milky fluid, which 

 coagulates, and with which alone they for a few 

 days feed t)ieir young, and afterwards feed them 

 with this coagulated fluid mixed with other foodc 

 How this refembles the breafts of female quadru- 

 peds after the production of their young ! and how 

 extraordinary, that the male fhould at this time give 

 piilk as 'well as the female I See Botanic Garden, 

 Part II. Note on Curcuma. 



The late Mr. David Hume, in his pofthurnous 

 works, places the powers of generation much above 

 thofe of our boafted reafoh ; and adds, that reafon 

 can only make a machine, as a clock or a fhip, but 

 the power of generation makes the maker of the 

 machine ; and probably from having obfervcd, that 

 the greateft part of the earth has been formed out 

 of organic recrements ; as the immenfe beds of lime- 

 ftone, chalk, marble, from the fhells of fifh ; and 

 the extenfive provinces of clay, fandfione, ironftone, 

 coals, from decompofed vegetables ; all which have 

 -been firft produced by generation, or by the fecre- 

 tions of organic life ; he concludes that the world 

 itfelf might have been generated, rather than cre- 

 ated; that is, it might have been gradually pro- 

 duced from very fmall beginnings, increaiing by 

 the aelivity of its' inherent principles, rather than 

 by a fuddcn evolution of the whole by the Ai- 

 afrtf mighty 



