846 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO ISQS. 



is allowed them, for Mr. Allen in his Account of the Generation of Eels, pub- 

 lished in the Philosophical Transactions, N°231, affirms that the parts dis- 

 tinguishing the sex are discoverable, and in this Rondeletius is positive, when 

 he affirms, Anguillas mutuo corporum complexu coeuntes se vidisse ; neque 

 putare se partibus ad gignendum necessariis prorsus destitutas esse, inferiore 

 enim ventris parte, et vulva in fceminis et semen in maribus reperitur ; sed 

 pinguedine multa circumfusa has partes non apparent : and from hence, I mean 

 from the parts of generation being hid in fat, might arise that mistake in Aris- 

 totle, which occasioned him so posivively to affirm, anguillam neque marem esse 

 neque foeminam. And though it cannot but be granted, that that ingenious 

 inspector of nature, Mr. Leuwenhoeck, has, by the help of his glasses, made 

 many curious discoveries in animals and their parts of generation, yet never 

 had he found a male eel that he could call so ; for all those that he dissected, as 

 in his letter in the Philosophical Transactions, N° 221, he declares were pro- 

 vided with a uterus, from whence he conjectures eels to be hermaphrodites, 

 and besides the uterus to be furnished with masculine seed. 



Another great controversy about the generation of eels is, whether they are 

 oviparous or viviparous ;* and many ingenious persons, who cannot consent to 

 an equivocal or spontaneous generation, yet firmly believe them to be oviparous, 

 whose sentiments are contrary to the observations of Walter Chetwynd, Esq. 

 who, in the month of May, found them to be viviparous, by cutting open the 

 red fundaments of the females, from whence the young eels would issue forth 

 alive ; and although Mr. Allen affirms them to be certainly viviparous, yet his 

 observations concerning the place of their conception I cannot conceive to be 

 consonant to that care and industry of nature, in providing convenient recep- 

 tacles for preserving the foetus ; neither is it agreeable to reason to believe that 

 when nature has provided a uterus in all animals, not only the viviparous, and 

 such as only cherish the embryo in utero, but in the oviparous also, and insects, 

 the eel and xiphia, or sword fish, mentioned by Bartholinus Cent. 2, H. l6, 

 anno l654, should be the only animals without it ; much less that the guts, 

 appointed by nature for the secretion of nourishment, and the expulsion of the 

 fa°ces, and which are always in motion, should be the place of generation in any 

 animal ; though we may allow eels not to feed gross in the winter. On the 

 contrary, that the eel has a uterus is asserted by Mr. Leuwenhoeck, who never 

 found them without, which perhaps is that part which Mr. Allen names a slen- 

 der gland transversely lying near the bowel. 



Besides, nature having in all animals, oviparous as well as viviparous, hitherto 



* Eels are viviparous, see a note annexed to a preceding article on this subject, at p. 9+ of thi» 

 Tol. of these Abridgments. 



