n; the evil is
abortion.

NATURE OF CONCEPTION.

The theories which have been advanced to explain the manner in which the
human species is continued and reproduced are very numerous. Including
the hypotheses of the ancient philosophers, some two hundred and fifty
have been promulgated by the greatest thinkers of all times. The older
ones do not deserve mention, as they are replete with absurdities. Such,
for instance, is that of Pythagoras, which supposed that a vapor
descended from the brain and formed the embryo. The Scythians therefore
took blood from the veins behind the ears to produce impotence and
sterility. Modern science has shown the total error of this and many
other views formerly entertained on this subject. Has galvanism or
electricity any share in the mysterious function? Some among the modern
physiologists have supposed that there is an electrical or magnetic
influence which effects generation. Even within a few months, Dr. Harvey
L. Byrd, Professor of Obstetrics in the Medical Department of Washington
University of Baltimore, has asserted that he has 'every reason for
believing that fecundation or impregnation is always an electrical
phenomenon; ... it results from the completion of an electric
circle,--the union of positive and negative electricities.' This,
however, is not accepted by all as the dictum of modern science.
Physiology has clearly established that the new being is the result of
contact between the male element, an independent, living animal, on the
one part, and the female element, a matured egg, on the other, involving
the union of the contents of two peculiar cells. Without such contact,
fecundation cannot take place.

The only matter of practical moment in connection with this most
interesting function which we have to announce, is the influence of the
mind on the offspring at the time of generation. This influence has long
been remarked in regard to animals as well as men. Jacob was aware of it
when he made his shrewd bargain with Laban for 'all the speckled and
spotted cattle' as his hire. For we are told that then 'Jacob took him
rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree, and pilled
white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.
And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters
in the watering-troughs, when the flocks came to drink, that they should
conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before t