434 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO ISQO-I. 



after conception, has no connection with the won)b ; that it sits wholly loose 

 from it, and is perfectly a little round egg with the foetus in the midst, which 

 sends forth its umbilical vessels by degrees, and at last lays hold on the uterus. 

 Now from hence it seems evident that the cicatricula, which is the fountain of 

 the animalcule's nourishment, does not sprout from the uterus, but has its origin 

 elsewhere, and falls in thither as into a fit soil, from whence it may draw rmtri- 

 ment for the growth of the foetus: otherwise it cannot be easily imagined how 

 it should not have an immediate connection with the uterus from the time of 

 conception. If we join all these three considerations together, viz. that an 

 animalcule cannot come forward without a proper nidus or cicatricula ; that 

 there have been frequent foetuses extra uterum ; and that they liave no adhesion 

 to the uterus for a considerable time after conception ; they seem to make it 

 evident that animals cannot be formed from animalcules, without the ova in 

 foeminis. To all these I shall subjoin the proposal of an experimentum crueis, 

 which may seem to determine whether the testes foeminei be truly the ovaria, 

 viz. Open the abdomen of the females of some kinds, and cut out these testi- 

 cles, and this will determine whether they be absolutely necessary for the for- 

 mation of animals. 



There are some difficulties proposed against this conjecture, which I think 

 may be easily resolved. Some object the distance between the tubse or cornua 

 uteri and the testicles ; but to this is opposed, by Swammerdam and others, the 

 like distance between the infundibulum, in hens and frogs, and the ovary, and 

 yet it cannot be denied that the eggs are transmitted through this into the 

 uterus: and besides R. de Graaf, and others, have by repeated observations 

 found that the cornua uteri do at certain times after conception embrace the 

 testes on both sides the uterus. They object in the second place the great dis- 

 proportion between the pretended eggs in the ovary, and the aperture of the 

 tubae or cornua uteri, the former being a great deal larger than the latter : but 

 both R. de Graaf and Malpighi have cleared that matter by showing, that these 

 bladders in the ovary are not the ova, but serve to form the glandules within 

 which the ova are formed, which break through a small papilla opening in the 

 glandule, which bears a proportion to the aperture of the tube. They object, 

 3. The difficulty to conceive how these eggs should be impregnated per semen 

 maris, both because there is no connection between the tubae and the ovary for 

 its transmission, and because Dr. Harvey could never discover any thing of it 

 in utero. As to the last, Mr. Leuwenhoeck has cleared that difficulty by the 

 discovery of innumerable animalcula seminis maris in cornubus uteri, and those 

 living a considerable time after coition. N° 174 of the Transactions. And as 

 to the former, we may either suppose that there is such an inflation of the tube 



