540 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1 68 1-2. 



body of it had not been lost, or this other so ill-treated, if I had expected to 

 have found, what we never looked for. 



But what shall we say this monster was? I am apt to think that we often 

 drink and eat what is alive ; and it is certain some things will live in our sto- 

 machs in despite of concoction, not to instance in the many sorts of gut-worms 

 natural to us, and which are bred with us, perhaps in some children even be- 

 fore they are born ; these worms, I say, do freely wander up and down the 

 guts and stomach at their pleasure, and receive no prejudice from the concoctive 

 faculty of them ; and for this reason we see insectivorous birds so solicitous to 

 kill worms and all other insects, by drawing them again and again through their 

 bills, as canes through a sugar mill, that they may be verily dead before they 

 swallow them, and instinct is the great wisdom of undebauched nature; again, 

 admirable instances there are of animals living within animals; of which in the 

 insect kind the Royal Society shall ere long receive some notes of mine upon 

 Godartius. And yet I am of opinion that what has been accidentally swallowed 

 by us alive, and that shall have the power to live-on within us, may have its 

 designed form and shape monstrously perverted, so as to appear to us quite 

 another thing than naturally and really it is; and this 1 take to be the case of 

 this odd creature, the present subject of discourse; so that it might have been 

 the spawn or embryo of a toad or newt. 



A New Theory of Fision. By Dr. Briggs. Philos. Collect. N° 0, p. 167. 



The rise of the optic nerves is very remarkable, for as the other nerves rise 

 in a flat manner from the basis of the brain, these rise higher, from 2 gibbous 

 protuberances, called thalami nerv. optic, as////, fig. 4, pi. 15; so that the 

 clasping of the several fibres upon them may very well resemble the flexure of 

 the strings of a viol upon its bridge, which is likewise protuberant or of a con- 

 vex figure. Now let us suppose 2 viols of equal size, and alike strung, when 

 their bridges are put on, those strings that are in the uppermost part will have 

 the greatest tension, and those gradually less as they are remote from the same. 

 In like manner, I suppose that the 2 fibres that are in the zenith or apex of the 

 2 thalami optici have the greatest tension, and the lowest or opposite part the 

 least tension of all, by reason of a less flexure; and the intermediate fibres pro- 

 portionable or intermediate degrees, with this exception, that the internal late- 

 ral fibres are to be supposed to have less tension than the external lateral fibres, 

 because these last have the greater flexure, as is evident from dd compared, 

 withggf. 



The superior fibre therefore in one thalamus opticus, and its correspondent 



