Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 002.djvu/176

 2. De Rerum Naturalium Initiis: Where he mentions the several Hypotheses and Principles of Philosophers, and approves of the Cartesian, esteeming, that none ever looked so like truth, as those; though he thinks them defective in this, that how well soever they shew the production of things out of Matter variously modified, yet they seem not to have sufficiently accounted for the efficient power thereof.

3. De Universitate: Where he seems to be in a Maze, and thinks, That the Structure of the Universe hath not been understood hitherto, nor will easily be hereafter.

4. De Sole: Which Lumuniary he is inclin'd to believe to be a kind of flaming Fire, appearing in a Telescope like a Caldron full of boyling Metal; Where also he discourses of the nature of Light, Heat, and Flame; and affirms Light (as other sensible Qualities) to be not in the Object but the Sentient; as Pain is not in the Sword, but in the Animal wounded by the Sword.

5. De Generatione Hominis: Where, distinguishing between Genitura and Semen, and making the former to be that substance, which either Sex furnishes to the Fœtus, and the latter, the Concrete of both Parents, He is of opinion, that that which he calls Genitura, consists of two things. Vid. a Crasse liquor, manifest to sense, and of a very subtil and refined substance, containing all the virtue of Generation, and lodged in the formes as its receptacle: Which having establish'd, he affirms, that grosser part of the Geniture not to be Blood elaborated, but a Juice, secreted from the Blood, and being strained through the Corpus varicosum or plexus pampiniformis (wherein the seminal Arteries are by innumerable Anastomoses so combined and interwoven with Veins, that very hardly any naked eye can discern a Vein from an Artery) it passeth into peculiar fit Vessels, and is of a colour like that of the White of an Egg. As to the Formation of the Fœtus, he esteems That, before the appearance of any Blood, or the framing of any Member, there are form'd all the Lineaments of the Animal to come, though indiscernibly; which he endeavours to make out very particularly, interweaving some Animadversions on Authors of differing sentiments, and mentioning several not unphilosophical Hints.

6. De Nutricatione: Here the Author observes some things in the