OF THE FOETUS. 331 



convince us, that thefe changes of colour are 

 more frequent, and that they happen whenever 

 the motion of the blood is accelerated, whether 

 it be occafioned by the heat of fiimmer, or by 

 any other caufe. The marks are always either 

 yellow, or red, or black; becaufe the blood gives 

 thefe colours to the fkin when it enters in too 

 great quantities into the veflels. If thefe marks 

 were occafioned by the appetites of the mother, 

 why are not their forms and colours as various 

 as the objects of her defires ? What a multitude 

 of ftrange figures would be exhibited, it all the 

 whimfical longings of a mother were written 

 upon the fkin of the child ? 



As our fenfations have no refemblance to the 

 objcds which excite them, it is impoffible that 

 defirc, fear, horror, or any other pafTion or emo- 

 tion, can produce real reprefentations of the ob- 

 jeds by which they are occafioned. An infant 

 being, in this refped, equally independent of the 

 mother as the egg is independent of the hen 

 that fits upon it, 1 ftiould be equally induced to 

 believe that the imagination of a hen, which 

 faw by accident a cock's neck twilled, fhould 

 produce wry necked chickens from the eggs fhe 

 was hatching, as that a woman that faw a man 

 broke upon the wheel, fl^ould produce, by the 

 mere force of imagination, a child with all its 

 limbs broken. 



But, fuppofing this fact to be well atteftcd, I 

 flill maintain that the imagination of the mother 



could 



