462 



Microscopical Essays. 



Meffrs. Baffon, Needham, and Baron Munckhaufen, have con- 

 fide red this part of animated nature in fo different a light from 

 other writers, that we cannot with propriety entirely pafs them 

 over. Mr. Needham imagined that there was a vegetative force 

 in every microfcopical point of water, and every vihble filament 

 of which the whole vegetable contexture conftfts ; that the feveral 

 fpecies of microfcopic animals may fubfide, refolve again into 

 gelatinous filaments, and again give leffer animals, and fo on, 

 till they can be no further purfued by glaffes. That agreeable 

 to this idea, every animal, or vegetable fubftance, advances as 

 faft as it can in it's revolution, to return by a flow defcent to one 

 common principle, whence it's atoms may return again, and 

 afcend to a new life. That notwithstanding this, the fpecific 

 feed of one animal can never give another of a different fpecies, 

 on account of the preparation it muft receive to conflitute it this 

 fpecific feed. 



M. Buffon afferts, that what have been called fpermatic ani- 

 mals, are not creatures really poflefling life, but fomething proper 

 to compofe a living creature, diftinguiming them by the name 

 of organic particles, and that the moving bodies which are to be 

 found in the infufions, either of animal or vegetable fubflances, 

 are of the fame nature. 



Baron Munckhaufen fuppofed that the feeds of mufhrooms were 

 firft animals, and then vegetables ; and this bec'aufe he had ob- 

 ferved fome of the globules in the infufions of mufhrooms, after 

 moving fome time, to begin to vegetate. 



It 



