Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/349

 it appears, and it is thence nourished and made to increase ; in the same way as mouldiness grows in moist places, in the dark corners of houses which long escape cleansing ; or, like camphor upon cedar wood tables, and moss upon rocks and the bark of trees ; lastly, as a kind of delicate down grows upon certain grubs.

Upon the same occasion I also debated with myself whether or not I should conclude, that with the coagulation of the col- liquament accomplished, the rudiments of the head and body existed simultaneously with the punctum saliens and the blood, but in a pellucid state, and so delicate that they almost escaped the eye, until becoming inspissated into a fungus or mucor, they acquired a more opaque white colour, and then came into view ; the blood meantime from its greater spissitude and purple colour being readily perceptible in the diaphanous colliqua- ment. But now when I look at the thing more narrowly, I am of opinion that the blood exists before any particle of the body appears ; that it is the first-born of all the parts of the embryo ; that from it both the matter out of which the foetus is embo- died, and the nutriment by which it grows are derived ; that it is in fine, if such thing there be, the primary generative par- ticle. But wherefore I am led to adopt this idea shall after- wards be shown more at length when I come to treat of the primary genital part, of the innate heat, and the radical mois- ture ; and, at the same time, conclude as to what we are to think of the vital principle (anima), from a great number of observations compared with one another.

About this period almost every hour makes a difference ; every thing grows larger, more definite and distinct; the rate of change in the egg is rapid, and one change succeeds immediately upon the back of another. The cavity in the egg is now much larger, and the whole of its upper portion is empty ; it is as if a fifth part of the egg had been removed.

The ramifications of the veins extend more widely, and are more numerous, not only in the colliquament as before, but they spread on one hand into the abumen, and on the other into the yelk, so that both of these fluids are everywhere co- vered over with blood-vessels. The upper portion of the yelk has now become much dissolved, so that it very obviously differs from the lower portion ; there are now, as it were, two yelks, or two kinds of yelk ; whilst the superior, like melted wax, is