700 PHILOSOPHICAL TRAXSACTIONS. [aNNO 1672. 



may see in the arms the joints of the shoulder bones and of the elbows; as also 

 the thighs and both the legs, together with their bones, called focils ; which I 

 had not observed, when I wrote my treatise of the Generation of the Bones. 

 All that you see of white in this eighth figure, has at this time the quality of 

 bones. 



Fig. 9 represents a child of six weeks after conception ; where it is to be 

 noted, that comparing together the bones of divers foetuses it will be found, per- 

 haps to admiration, that that which has been conceived but a little time after 

 another, has yet the bones in proportion twice as large. That which is here 

 exhibited by fig. Q, appears much smaller than another of two months, as appears 

 in my book of the generation of bones; but the bones are not the less remark- 

 able ; for whatever has the hardness and consistence of bones in that, has already 

 the nature of cartilages in this. The inferior jaw-bone is most observable in 

 this child of six weeks, marked A, it being at this age composed of six little 

 bones, which when it is born are all joined together and make but one. 



If it be asked how I come to know that these degrees of growth come to pass 

 exactly within those times recited, especially since in abortions we often see 

 embryos of four months and more that are not so big as those spoken of ? I 

 might answer by repeating all I said before, when I compared the proportions of 

 those different germs. To which I shall only add, that embryos which miscarry 

 have often remained a long while in the body before they came forth, or have 

 lived there so sickly, as not to draw perhaps half the nourishment necessary for 

 them, and therefore much less than they otherwise would be.* 



So far Kerkringius; on whose discourse are made these reflections by M. 

 Denys. 



1. That those eggs are generated in faeminarum testiculis, and thence made 

 to descend per tubam into the matrix, in coitu, per vim spirituosam seminis mas- 

 culi, per uteri tubam penetrantis. 



2. That those eggs are of different sizes, since those of the third fig. represent 

 one according to the life, as it was found with nine or ten smaller ones in a 

 woman of forty years of age. Such as were found by him in the testicles of a 

 cow, are duly exhibited in fig. 4. If any wonder that in so large an animal they 

 should be so much smaller than in a woman, he will have more cause to admire 

 that women have them so little in comparison of those of ducks, hens, &c. the 

 first beginnings of things not bearing always a proportion to their state of in- 

 crease, as beans and peas (e. g.) whence grow plants but of a very middling size, 

 are much larger seeds than the kernels of apples and pears, which produce con- 



* For more accurate representations of foetuses at different periods of gestation, see Ruysch's 

 Thesaur. Anat, and Bidloo's works. 



