OF APES. 6i 



vegetables to animals by means of nutrition, re- 

 turns from animals to vegetables by the procefs 

 of putrefadion, and maintains a perpetual circu- 

 lation for the animation of beings. He percei- 

 ved, that thefe adive organic particles exifted ia 

 all organized bodies ; that they were combined, 

 in fmaller or greater quantities, with dead mat- 

 ter ; that they were more abundant in animals, 

 ia whom every thing is alive, and more rare in 

 vegetables, in which death predominates, and life 

 feems to be extind, organization being furcharged 

 with brute matter ; and that plants are, of courfe, 

 deprived of progreflive motion, of heat, and ot 

 life, exhibiting no other quality of animation 

 but expanfion and reprodudion. Refledingon 

 the manner in which thefe lafl; are accomplilhed, 

 he difcovered that every living being is a mould 

 that has the power of affimilating the fubftances 

 with which it is nourilhed ; that growth is an 

 eiFed of this affimilation ; thr.t the developement 

 of a living body is not a fimple augmentation of 

 volume, but an extenfion in all dimenfions, a 

 penetration of new matter through all pans of 

 the mafs ; that tSefe parts, by increafing propor- 

 tionally to the whole, and the whole proportion- 

 ally to the parts, the form is preferved, and con- 

 tinues always the fame, till growth is completed ; 

 that, when the body has acquired its full expan- 

 fion, the fame matter, formerly employed in 

 augmenting its volume, is returned, as fuperflu- 

 ous, from all the pans to v;hich it had been af- 



funilated. 



