620 - PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO J 755. 



to him before, it having been sent flayed. From this persuasion it was natural to 

 infer that if hairs loosened from the skin of the fetus, and floating in the liquor 

 amnii, can find a way into the intestines, and get entangled in the meconium, it 

 is impossible but the liquor amnii must enter and pass through the whole alimen- 

 tary passage along with them ; as a fluid may certainly penetrate where hairs 

 cannot : but no good reason can be assigned, or even conceived, why hairs should 

 be admitted where the fluid is excluded. 



The only reasonable scruple that remained to be got over was, that this being 

 but a single instance, a general conclusion was not to be too hastily drawn from 

 it ; that it was possible there might be some morbid concretions in the meconium 

 of this particular calf, resembling hairs, which concretions in a common and na- 

 tural way might be wanting ; or some preternatural communication between the 

 primae viae in this subject, and the liquor amnii, not to be found in the gene- 

 rality of other fetuses. But he afterwards received some of the first dung of 

 other calves, in which he also found a great number of strong hairs all over; so 

 as to leave no room for doubting but that this appearance is general in the me- 

 conium of calves, in a natural way. 



The reader will please to observe that in neither of these instances he could 

 be deceived, if he had ever so little reason to trust to the judgment and fidelity 

 of those who supplied him with what he wanted. The colour and consistence 

 of the meconium of a fetus is so very peculiar, and so widely difi^erent from that 

 of faeces formed out of ingested aliments, that none, who have any knowledge 

 in these matters, can mistake the one for the other. In the mean time he 

 omitted not to open the embryos of the cow-kind, such as he could procure in 

 the shambles of the market-town he lived in, and to examine their meconium. 

 The 2 most advanced towards maturity, which he met with, had stiff long hairs 

 about the mouth, the eye-brows, the ears, and navel, and a good many on the 

 end of the tail ; but none on their skins. In neither of these, any more than in 

 the younger embryos which he examined, was there so much as a single hair to 

 be found in the meconium ; for this plain reason, if he judged right, because 

 they had not got hairs on their bodies of long enough continuance to become 

 loose, and float in the liquor amnii. 



But as opportunities of coming at fetuses of this species, especially such as are 

 remarkably nearer to maturity than those 2 just now mentioned, are rare, he 

 tried to supply that defect by opening those of other animals. Accordingly he 

 procured 6 puppies, of the butcher-dog kind, brought forth at the full time at 

 one litter. Having taken out the whole meconium of every one of them, after 

 the strictest search he could find no hairs in any part of it. He had likewise an 

 opportunity of opening a colt that died either in the birth, at the full time, or 

 immediately after, before its meconium was discharged ; which he found in great 



