troL. XIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 581 



find in the seed of a man, as also of a dog, two different sorts of animalcules, 

 answering the different sexes of male and female.* 



I know some men will even swear that they have found the aforesaid eggs in 

 the tuba fallopiana of beasts. But I need not believe that these round bodies 

 they have seen in it should be drawn down from the imagined egg-branch, 

 through the long and very narrow passage of the tuba fallopiana, because some 

 of the bodies are as large as a pea, nay as the whole egg-branch ; and of a very 

 firm and compacted substance: but the way through which they should pass id 

 no wider than the compass of a small pin. Again if it were so as is said, these 

 bodies would be found, not by chance, but always when searched for immedi- 

 ately after copulation ; but that is so far from being true, that it is hardly to be 

 imagined, if we consider how little time is taken up in the copulation of several 

 animals, as a cow, rabbit, &c. In which so short time nevertheless ought to 

 be drawn down through a long and narrow passage, a great number of bodies ; 

 in some cases 2 or 3, in others 6 or 8, and more, according to the number of 

 foetuses to be produced. 



But supposing such bodies there to be found, why may they not be formed 

 ex residuo seminis masculi, gathered together into a ball or globule; as we see 

 several other substances in animals that are neither of too thick nor too thin a 

 consistence, as fat, sanies, &c. Or secondly, there being no part of the body 

 which is not nourished, and which does not cast off some things that are super- 

 fluous, why may there not in the womb or tuba be several excretions made, 

 which by compression on all sides may be brought into a round figure ? This 

 supposal being true, it will follow that egg-like bodies are also in the womb 

 or tuba of females that have not been accompanied with the male. 



It may be queried, if one animalcule of seed be sufficient to produce a foetus, 

 why are there so many thousands in one drop of it ? I answer that in an apple- 

 tree, enduring 100 years and bearing every year a great many thousand bios 

 soms, which may a great part of them be apples, having each of them 6 or 8 

 seeds, each seed being placed in a proper soil, and carefully cultivated, is capable 

 of becoming a tree; yet it may happen that nothing grows from all the apples 



• It is scarcely necessary to remark that this hypothesis of generation is now universally exploded. 

 A living filament furnished by the semen masculinum has been substituted in place of Mr. Lewen- 

 hoeck's animalcula, by an ingenious philosopher of this country, now no more} but the theory which 

 at this day has most advocates, is that which supposes that the primordium or germ exists in th^. 

 female before coition, and that during that act it becomes subjected to the influence and actual con- 

 tact of the semen masculinum j whereby its previously quiescent parts are stimulated into action ; and 

 being conveyed (in the manner described in a note at p. 697, volume i, of this Abridgement) from 

 its former repository (the ovarium) to another receptacle (the uterus) it there undergoes a gradual 

 developementj and after a time acquires the contour and resemblance of the parent forms. 



