VOL. XIII.3 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 6l7 



to the germinating plant, which is less able to make its way than the egg. But 

 besides though the extremity of the tube be membranous in most quadrupeds, 

 in which it is possible a seminal liquor might be transmitted to the womb ; in 

 women it is divided like a knot of ribbon, and is no more adapted to receive any 

 thing but an egg, than the fingers expanded to receive and contain a fluid. The 

 egg has not been able sometimes to get into the womb; Riolan speaks of a hu- 

 man foetus seen in one of the tubes;* and Dr. Harvey assures you he has seen it 

 himself. In the dissection of a bitch at Oxford, the embryoes either could not 

 get into it, the membranous expansion being hindered from ascending to and 

 clasping the ovaria, by the fulness of the womb; or from the same cause were 

 forced back again. She had been with whelp: by a blow she received the foetus 

 died within her. She discharged by the pudendum a great quantity of putrid 

 flesh and matter. She was afterward able to run in the pack. After the second 

 impregnation she was observed to have a very ill shaped belly. When dead the 

 owner sent her to Oxford. The cornua of the womb were so stuffed up with 

 the bones and firmer muscles and thicker skin of the foetus, (some of them lay 

 in the usual posture, the skeletons of which were entire, the interstices of the 

 bones only filled up with skin and flesh), that no seminal matter, or aura semi- 

 nalis could possibly find a passage to the ovarium. The eggs affected in the 

 second impregnation, finding no room in the cornua, were forced back into the 

 abdomen: where they were found affixed to the mesentery, kidney, &c. Only 

 two of the bags had a communication with the womb by a slender duct. These 

 I suppose fell into the cornua first, and began to fasten to them, but growing 

 larger were forced to retire. The other three had had no reception there at all. 

 The membranes which contained the embryoes were all of them very thin, and 

 the animalcules in them had wanted a due supply of nutritious matter. This 

 seems to give as clear a proof of the truth of the modem opinion, as can be ex- 

 pected or desired. — [In the concluding part of this communication, the author 

 subjoins some pointed reflections on the absurdity of the doctrine of equivocal 

 generation.] 



The Anatomy of a monstrous Pig. Communicated by an ingenious Student in 



Physic. N° 147, p. 188. 



i 



About the beginning of December l682, among many pigs of a sow, there 

 was one which had no passage for the faeces, either solid or liquid, although the 

 anus was not outwardly closed up ; which, whether natural, or caused by the 

 neighbours who had attempted a cure before I saw it, I cannot positively assert. 

 There was likewise no visible sign of either sex. Being dissected, it aflforded 

 • An instance of this is recorded in the first volume of this Abridgement, p. 358. 



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