Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 013.djvu/192

 gives his Opinion very expresly in his Treatise ''de Partu. Vipera ovum Unicolor & molli cortice (qualis Muliebris conceptus est) intra se continet'', &c. The Viper has Eggs, whose parts are of one colour, inclosed in a soft Shell; and the very same is a Womans conception. But he could not inform himself, how that Egg in Women or in Does comes into the Womb. He declares himself fully satisfied after several Tryals, that no liquor can be so forcibly injected into the Womb, as to make its passage into the place of Conception. Nor would he suspect, that the Seed of the Female lay till the Egg appear'd, in any crannies or recesses of the Horns; which he asserts are then as smooth and soft, as the Corpus Callosum of the Brain. Dr. Harvey having thus sufficiently confuted the opinion, which till his time prevail'd, of the production of Animals from the mixture of the Seminal matter of both Sexes: 'twas not so difficult to discover, whence the Egg came, which he saw about 7 Weeks after impregnation. The Fallopian Tubes, which joyn to the Horns and terminate very near the Ovaria (as the testes Muliebres are generally now call'd) directed the Ingenious and Industrious de Graff to make more accurate dissections of them. He presently saw, that the limpid liquor, which Dr. Harvey thought was designed to humect the parts adjacent, was contain'd in an entire Membrane, and exactly answered the description he gives of the Eggs he saw in the Womb.

As he first discover'd the use of those Globules in the Ovaria, so he has been so happy in that excellent piece de Mulieris Organis, to give so demonstrative an account of the alteration of those wch are impregnated, the way of excluding them by the glandulous substance swelling behind them, and the Aperture, through which they pass, remaining open all the time of the gestation, and exactly in each Ovarium answering the number of Embryo's in each Horn: But more particularly he has so very nicely observed the Progress of the Eggs in Conies, the very time of their passing into the Tubes, and appearing in the Horns of the Womb,