tation of three of England's great intellects in one small volume,
and then proceed to examine the embryological concepts of one of the
trio, Sir Thomas Browne.

Browne's _Religio Medici_, composed as a private confession of faith
around 1635, is known to all students of English literature, as is his
later, splendid work on death and immortality, _Hydrotaphia,
Urne-Buriall_. One of the greatest stylists of English prose, Browne was
also a physician and a student of generation who deserves our attention
as an early chemical embryologist pointing the way to a form of
embryological investigation prominent in the last half of the
seventeenth century.

Browne's embryological opinions are found particularly in _Pseudodoxia
Epidemica_, _The Garden of Cyrus_, and in his unpublished _Miscellaneous
Writings_. Browne, a well-read man, was educated at Oxford, Montpellier,
Padua, and Leyden, and he was thoroughly imbued with the teaching of the
prophets of the "new learning." This is evident throughout his writings,
as witness his admonition to the reader of the _Christian Morals_:

Let thy Studies be free as thy Thoughts and Contemplations, but fly
not only upon the wings of Imagination; Joyn Sense unto Reason, and
Experiment unto Speculation, and so give life unto Embryon Truths,
and Verities yet in their Chaos.[26]

Browne greatly admired Harvey's work on generation, considering it "that
excellent discourse ... So strongly erected upon the two great pillars
of truth, experience and solid reason."[27] Browne carried out a variety
of studies upon animals of all kinds, in them joining Sense unto Reason,
and "Experiment unto Speculation." Thus in his studies of generation, he
made observations and also performed certain simple chemical
experiments. Noting that "Naturall bodyes doe variously discover
themselves by congelation,"[28] Browne studied experimentally the
chemical properties of those substances providing the raw material of
development. He observed the effects of such agents as heat and cold,
oil, vinegar, and saltpeter upon eggs of various animals, recording such
facts as the following:

Of milk the whayish part, in eggs wee observe the white, will
totally freez, the yelk with the same degree of cold growe thick &
clammy like gumme of trees; butt the sperme or tredde hold its
former body, the white growing stiff that is nearest it.... Egges
seem to have their owne coagulum