670 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1702. 



But about 6 in the evening, having again taken some ot the semen out of the 

 vasadefcrentia, I could not perceive any of them Hving. I then opened those 

 vessels in several places, even where they terminate in the testicles, but the 

 animalcula were all dead. Since then the animalcula in semine masculino are 

 living when taken out of the body of the cock, so long after the cock himself 

 is dead, perhaps they are intended to fasten in the ovarium or egg-nest of the 

 hen, and impregnate not one yolk, but many, which compose the bed of eggs ; 

 and the rather as we find, that with one coition of the cock and hen, most of 

 the eggs which the hen lays in a month or two after, are impregnated. 



As to spiders, a certain gentleman, who had often considered their nature 

 and copulation, told me that he could seldom meet with the males of the large 

 spiders, and that he believed the females killed and eat them up. 



And I was further told by the same gentleman, that where we saw the females 

 of the smaller sort of spiders, there was also one male ; and I have observed 

 the same myself. But what this gentleman took for the membrum virile, was 

 quite otherwise, and I told him he was mistaken ; for the more I showed them, 

 the more I was convinced that they were two working instruments, with which 

 the spiders take up their food, and use also instead of short feet.* 



Since that time I have often been in places where thistles, nettles, and other 

 weeds grew, where I saw several kinds of spiders, and in great numbers ; and 

 observed that when the male spiders approached the females, in order, as I 

 thought, to couple, the females always put the males to flight. I have often 

 taken up the male spiders, that I might observe their seed, and have been fully 

 satisfied that that little white matter which I have squeezed out of the hinder 

 part of their bodies, and which was sometimes as large as a grain of sand, 

 and sometimes a little larger, was nothing else but the male seed of these ani- 

 mals ; I discovered in it a vast number of animalcula, which continued living a 

 long while. These were so exceedingly small, that I believe a thousand millions 

 of their bodies joined together would not be equal to a large grain of sand. 

 By reason of the extreme smallness of these animals, it was impossible to re- 

 present the figure of their bodies, or of the instruments with which they moved 

 so strongly, as to continue living above 5 hours after they were separated from 

 the bodies of the spiders. 



I shut up in a glass tube 3 male spiders, and 1 female together ; and after 

 the space of 2 days, I saw the female fall upon the males with such violence, 

 that the blood ran out of their feet ; on which I killed the female, and the next 

 day I saw two of the male spiders lying dead, and the remaining male was 



* The gentleman however happened to be in the right. See Clerk's Araitd Suecici, &c. 



