VOL. XIII.3 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 667 



gut. By the way I observed something of the damage that frogs may do to 

 fish-ponds, for I took out of some of their stomachs 8, 10 or more young 

 fishes. 



I examined one of the muscles of the hinder leg of a frog, which consisted of 

 filaments, and those again of a great number of lesser filaments, which had 

 more rings in them than I had formerly seen in the muscular threads of an ox, 

 fly, gnat, flea, or louse. Such numerous rings I have since met with in the fila- 

 ments of the muscle of a lamb, taken from the rim of the belly, near the hinder 

 leg. From the indentings of these filaments I can not only satisfy myself how 

 the limbs come to stand bent, when the muscles are at rest, but also why we 

 can walk a longer time than stand still ; and why our arms when we walk do not 

 hang down at their full length stretched out by our sides, but move backwards 

 and forwards; for if the arms should still hang straight down, then would one 

 muscle be stretched too much, and another bent or drawn up too close; both 

 these things disagreeing with the natural constitution of the muscle. 



jin Account of a Book entituled Relatione de Ritrovamento deW Uova di Chiocciokf 



&c. N° 152, p. 356. 



This anonymous author dedicates his treatise to Signor Malpighi. He first 

 takes notice of the opinion of the schools which taught two sorts of generation, 

 either by the seed of the animal, or spontaneous from corruption; and says, the 

 moderns reduce those two to one ; and having observed the uniformity of nature 

 in most of her works, have gone yet farther, and ventured to prove that the 

 general universal productive principle of all species is ex ovo. And this he endea- 

 vours to pursue in the works of the ancients as well as the modems, and out of 

 scripture as well as philosophy; but one passage is remarkable out of Hippocrates, 

 in his book de Natura Pueri ; where, relating the case of a young woman, who in 

 dancing miscarried of a foetus of 6 days old, Hippocrates says, it was like a raw 

 egg the shell being first taken off; and therefore in the end concludes that the 

 nature of the oviparous differs not from that of man. 



But still there seemed to be much difiiculty in the production of insects, till 

 Signor Redi, by many incontestible experiments, proved them to be generated 

 out of eggs ; and by that convicted of error the natural histories of Aristotle and 

 ^lian, showing the necessity of a new and more accurate one, which he owns 

 is with much glory pursued by the Royal Society of London, as well as that of 

 Paris and Florence ; and particularly makes very honourable mention of Mr. 

 Lister, for his history of spiders and snails; and of Mr. Ray, for being the first 

 discoverer of their being all hermaphrodites, or androgynous, as he terms it. 



After this, he says, the thing seemed out of dispute, when a book came out 



4a2 



