VOL. XLV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. GOQ 



tails were so far from being members given them to swim and steer by, that they 

 evidently caused in them an instable oscillatory motion; and were in effect 

 nothing more than long filaments of the viscid seminal substance which they 

 necessarily trailed after them ; they were of various lengths in various animals, 

 and they insensibly, by the continual progressive motion of those animals, grew 

 shorter and shorter, till some of them appeared without any at all, swimming 

 equably in the fluid. It was then plain how these animals were to be classed; 

 their origin was clearly to be derived from principles contained in this matter, 

 either by an evolution of organical parts, as M. de BufFon supposed, or by a 

 real vegetation, as Mr. N. thought, of the same kind with those he had before 

 observed in his infusions; though more prompt, because the matter was more 

 exalted: consequently the spermatic animals were of the same kind as all other 

 microscopical animals, their origin the same, their influence nothing more in 

 generation, nor any otherwise conducting to its cause, than as effects of those 

 principles in the semen, which alone are the true and adequate cause of it. 

 See fig. 5, pi. 1 0. 



These vegetative powers, which, from the very beginning of his observations, 

 he had found to reside in all substances, animal or vegetable, and in every part 

 of those substances, as far as the smallest microscopical point, he had at this 

 time certain proofs of ; though not so plain and incontestible as those he had pro- 

 cured a few days before M. de Bufibn left Paris for the country, and which he 

 had prosecuted after his departure. These he communicated to him in a few words 

 the night before he began his journey, yet he was not at that time acquainted 

 with any special detail of the many singularities that attend these latter vegeta- 

 tions, for he had but just then made and entered on the discovery of them him- 

 self. He was obliged the more particularly to observe this, because the many 

 consequences M. de. B. has since drawn, as well as himself, and which, with- 

 out any mutual communication, happened to tally with and seemingly to flow 

 from the discoveries, were not in fact deduced from a circumstantiated knowledge 

 of these new phenomena, which M. de B. had not, but from this one principle, 

 that there is a real productive force in nature; in which they had both long since 

 agreed, however they may have differed in explaining that action: for whether 

 it be by an evolution and combination of organical parts, as M. de Buffon sup- 

 poses, or by a real vegetating force residing in every microscopical point, may be 

 probably far beyond the power of microscopes to determine. But as the prin- 

 ciple from which they depart is entirely the same, it must necessarily lead to si- 

 milar thoughts, and similar consequences. 



Mr. N.'s first proofs therefore were drawn from a close attendance to all the 

 common infusions, particularly that of wheat pounded in a marble mortar. It 

 was plain from them all, that after some time allowed to the water to call off the 



VOL. IX. ' 4 1 



