THE 



ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



NIMALS poffefs fenfation through the powers of a living organization, which is 

 animated by the action of a medullary fubftance ; they perceive by the energy 

 of nerves, and move themfelves from place to place by the exertions of their will. The 

 life of their animated, and perpetually moving, hydraulic machines, is fuftained by an 

 electrico-etherial lambent flame, which originates in the brain; and in it is the refi- 

 dence of the will, the incomprehenfible caufe of voluntary motion. 



Nature, munificent in the multiplication of her works almofl: to prodigality, has or- 

 dained that animal life fhould originate in minutenefs beyond conception ; it is gene- 

 rated in a fluid, and begins to exift in the liquid matter of an egg ; for, as has long 

 ago been obferved by Ariftotle, " every living thing arifes from an egg." The egg 

 within its coats, which often contain the white or glutinous matter, is always compofed 

 of a yolk ; floating on the upper furface of this is inferted the pulfatory fpeck, or punclum 

 fallens ; this enlarges, by a fpecies of vegetation, into an embryo, which, like a plant 

 by its Rem, is attached by the umbilical chord, and rooted in the placenta of the yolk. 



The prolific mother, before conception, produces a living medullary abridgement of 

 a new animal, perfectly refembling her own kind, fimilar to the plume in vegetable 

 feeds, which has been called the carina of Malpighius. This, through the male in- 

 fluence, analogous to the action of the farina foecundans, or pollen of plants, aflume to 

 itfelf a heart, which ramifies through the whole of its minute body ; for it is ohlerved 

 that the pulfatory fpeck, or punflum /aliens, of the hatching egg, firft prefencs to view 

 a beating heart, and a brain, wich its medulla oblongata. This little heart, which flops 

 when cold, is excited to action by the influence of genial heat ; and into this the gra- 

 dual expanfion of the air bubble prefles the nourifhing liquors, through proper vafcular 

 canals prepared for their conveyance. The firft rudiment, therefore, of life in living 

 animals is only a medullary ramification continued from the firft creation of each fpe- 

 cies ; hence the egg may be confidered as a living medullary bud, exifting from the 



very 



