204 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1685. 



to be the muscles: when I cast my eye on the breast, to see the ribs, I found 

 the place so full of blood vessels, that there was nothing else to be seen. 



This whole animal I judged to be no larger than 4- part of a pea. And 

 if so small a creature be furnished with all its parts, there can be no reason to 

 doubt, that the same creature has them, though he be a lOOG times less, and 

 the parts are not distinguishable by the sight. And if an insect has limbs and 

 bowels, though it is not 1 ,000,000,000th part so large as a sand, then may the 

 animalia seminis have likewise the same limbs and bowels, which the foetus has 

 when brought forth. 



Further, I took out of the ovarium, which was on the same side where the 

 fcEtus lay, 2 round red globular bodies, commonly called eggs, each about the 

 size of a pea, and consequently each egg about 8 times as large as the said 

 whole animal. These supposed eggs, though I took them from between mem- 

 branes, were each wrapped in a skin or membrane, having blood vessels run- 

 ning through it ; and on opening the eggs, I found they consisted chiefly of a 

 glandulous substance, and every glandule likewise consisted of other lesser 

 glandules. 



I bought a female rabbit, and let it take buck 3 times in my presence, and 

 then killed it ; but did not open the womb, till a quarter of an hour after. 

 About an inch from the beginning of one of the horns, I found a little fluid 

 matter, containing some few living animals of the male seed ; but in the parts 

 where the cornu joins to the vagina, the living animals were very numerous ; 

 in the middle of the cornu, and toward the further end, there were no animals 

 at all, nor any thing to be seen, but a few blood globules swimming in a little 

 fluid matter. The reason why the animalia seminis were not throughout the 

 cornu, I believe may be, that the seed had not been long enough in the womb 

 and therefore the animals had not time to disperse themselves all over it. 



The other horn being yet untouched, I wrapped it up in a piece of paper, 

 and put it in a small box which I carried in my pocket, the weather being cold, 

 from 9 o'clock in the morning till 3 in the afternoon, at which time I opened it, 

 but found it little different from the other horn, either in the number of the 

 animals, or in their progress in it. I opened the womb a little below the 

 horns, and found a greater number of the animalia seminis than I had yet 

 seen ; but in the outermost part of the vagina there were no animals at all. In 

 both the horns laid open, I could find no round body larger than a blood 

 globule. 



I then endeavoured to discover the make of the animals, but it proved a 

 work of great difficulty, yet I saw that their bodies are not oval but flattish. 

 Fig. 10, ABC, is the body of a dead animal of the male seed of a rabbit. 



