6[U PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS.. [aNNO 1742. 



into two parts, life has continued seemingly in both, and with strong signs of 

 it, longer than we have had the patience to attend and examine. We have 

 been, indeed, quite uncertain, in which of the parts this seeming life has been 

 most conspicuous; and as both parts have seemed to endeavour to get away 

 and have frequently soon after been found missing, boys and ordinary people 

 are generally possessed of an opinion, that they unite and grow together again 

 after their separation. 



Now, if it could once be allowed, that animal life and sensation might sub- 

 sist but an instant, in both parts of the creature, after its section; the whole 

 remaining difficulty would be only as to the cure of the wounds, and the repro- 

 duction of the necessary organs that are wanting. And, for the first of these, 

 we know very well, that the more imperfect animals are killed with much 

 greater difficulty than the more perfect, their vitals being more diffused, and 

 their general organization being, I suppose, far more simple than that of the 

 higher tribes; and as to the other, I think no one will see any impossibility in 

 the reproduction of certain parts, after what we have seen and read of, in the 

 lobster and cray-fish kinds, who when they chance by any misfortune to lose a 

 claw, reproduce it in a short time with all its joints, and the proper muscles for 

 moving them : all which appears as difficult as the regaining of a mouth and a 

 tail to some of the worm-kind ; whose general organization being simple, and 

 consisting chiefly of only one straight gut, or passage, from the mouth to the 

 vent, they seem to want little more to reproduce either, than a contraction of 

 the wound, with the assistance of the muscles that move the several rings of 

 which the body is composed; and every one of which, in its first and natural 

 state, performs almost the same motions as are necessary for suction or ejection: 

 the latter of which we have even sometimes seen very wonderfully supplied in 

 our own species, in those cases, where grievous wounds of the intestines have 

 put nature on trying to perform her operations in a new way. 



On the whole, we are all very desirous to see M. Reaumur's memoir on this 

 curious subject; we hope it will soon be published, when, as his curious and 

 exact experiments will afford infinite entertainment, so his judicious remarks 

 upon them will doubtless be no less instructive; but will, in all probability, 

 give a light into these matters we do not yet think of. In the mean time I 

 could not help just mentioning what came into my own head on the occasion, 

 hoping that however you may look on my thoughts as the dreams, perhaps, of 

 a man bewildered in his inquiries into nature, you will still believe me to be a 

 firm and constant lover of truth, and ready at all times to receive and embrace 

 whatever is really such, however odd and surprising it may at the first chance to 

 ^pear. 



