hment from other combinations of matter, or recombine them into new
kinds of matter, proper to excite into action the filaments, which absorb
or attract them by animal appetency. In this process we must attend not
only to the action of the living filament which receives a nutritive
particle to its bosom, but also to the kind of particle, in respect to
form, or size, or colour, or hardness, which is thus previously prepared
for it by digestion, sanguification, and secretion. Now as the first
filament of entity cannot be furnished with the preparative organs above
mentioned, the nutritive particles, which are at first to be received by
it, are prepared by the mother; and deposited in the ovum ready for its
reception. These nutritive particles must be supposed to differ in some
respects, when thus prepared by different animals. They may differ in size,
solidity, colour, and form; and yet may be sufficiently congenial to the
living filament, to which they are applied, as to excite its activity by
their stimulus, and its animal appetency to receive them, and to combine
them with itself into organization.

By this first nutriment thus prepared for the embryon is not meant the
liquor amnii, which is produced afterwards, nor the larger exterior parts
of the white of the egg; but the fluid prepared, I suppose, in the ovary of
viviparous animals, and that which immediately surrounds the cicatricula of
an impregnated egg, and is visible to the eye in a boiled one.

Now these ultimate particles of animal matter prepared by the glands of the
mother may be supposed to resemble the similar ultimate particles, which
were prepared for her own nourishment; that is, to the ultimate particles
of which her own organization consists. And that hence when these become
combined with a new embryon, which in its early state is not furnished with
stomach, or glands, to alter them; that new embryon will bear some
resemblance to the mother.

This seems to be the origin of the compound forms of mules, which evidently
partake of both parents, but principally of the male parent. In this
production of chimeras the antients seem to have indulged their fancies,
whence the sphinxes, griffins, dragons, centaurs, and minotaurs, which are
vanished from modern credulity.

It would seem, that in these unnatural conjunctions, when the nutriment
deposited by the female was so ill adapted to stimulate the living filament
derived from the male into action, and to