588 GENERATION. SECT. XXXIX. 6. 



Limacibus, p. 145; who, amongft many other final 

 caufes, which he adduces to account for it, adds, 

 ut tarn triflibus et frigidis animalibus majori cum 

 voluptate perficiatnr venus. 



1 here is, however, another final caufe, to which 

 this circumftance may be imputed : it was obferved 

 above, that vegetable buds and bulbs, which are 

 produced without a mother, are always exaft re- 

 iemblances of thei* parent ; as appears in grafting 

 fruit-trees, and in the flower-buds of the dioiceous 

 plants, which aie always of the fame lex on the 

 fame tree; hence thofe hermaphrodite infects, if 

 they could have produced young without a mother, 

 would not have been capable of that change or im- 

 provement, which is feen in all other animals, and 

 in thofe vegetables, which are procreated by the 

 male embryon received and nourished by the female. 

 And it is hence probable, if vegetables could 

 only have been produced by buds and bulbs, and 

 not by fexual generation, that there would not at 

 this time have exifted one thoufandth part of their 

 ptefent number of fpecies ; which have probably 

 been originally mule-prpJudtions; nor could any 

 kind of improvement or change have happened to 

 them, except by the difference of foil or climate. 



3. I conclude, that the imagination of the male 

 at the time of copulation, or at the time of the fe* 

 cretion of the femen, may fo affeci this fecretion by 

 irritative or fenfitive affociation, as defcribed in No. 

 q. i. of this Section, as to caufe the production of 

 fimilarity of form and of features, with the diftinc- 

 tion of lex ; as the motions of the chifiel of the 

 turner imitate or correfpond with thofe of the ideas 

 of the artift. It is not here to be underftood, that 

 the firft living fibre, which is to form an animal, is 

 produced with any fimilarity of form to the future 

 animal ; but with propenfities, or appetences, which 

 fnall produce by accretion of parts the fimilarity of 



form, 



