CANTO ii. REPRODUCTION OF LIFE. 53 



The potent wish in the productive hour 



Calls to its aid Imagination's power, 



O'er embryon throngs with mystic charm presides, 



And sex from sex the nascent world divides, 120 



With soft affections warms the callow trains, 



And gives to laughing Love his nymphs and swains; 



Imaginations power. 1. 118. The manner in which the similarity of 

 the progeny to the parent, and the sex of it, are produced by the power 

 of imagination, is treated of in Zoonomia. Sect. 39. 6. 3. It is not to be 

 understood, that the first living fibres, which are to form an animal, 

 are produced by imagination, with any similarity of form to the 

 future animal; but with appetencies or propensities, which shall pro- 

 duce by accretion of parts the similarity of form and feature, or of 

 sex, corresponding with the imagination of the father. 



His nymphs and swains. 1. 122. The arguments which have been 

 adduced to show, that mankind and quadrupeds were formerly in an 

 hermaphrodite state, are first deduced from the present existence of 

 breasts and nipples in all the males ; which latter swell on titillation 

 like those of the females, and which are said to contain a milky fluid 

 at their birth; and it is affirmed, that some men have given milk to 

 their children in desert countries, where the mother has perished; as 

 the male pigeon is said to give a kind of milk from his stomach along 

 with the regurgitated food, to the young doves, as mentioned in 

 Additional Note IX. on Storge. 



Secondly, from the apparent progress of many animals to greater 

 perfection, as in some insects, as the flies with two wings, termed 

 Diptera; which have rudiments of two other wings, called halteres, 

 or poisers j and in many flawers which have rudiments of new stamina, 

 or filaments without anthers on them. See Botanic Garden, Vol. II. 

 Curcuma, Note, and the Note on 1. 204 of Canto I. of this work. 



