they be there actually form'd. Another Consideration is from the Analogy, which we may suppose between Plants and Animals. All Vegetables we do see proceed ex Plantula, the Seeds of Vegetables being nothing else but little Plants of the same kind folded up in Coats and Membranes; and from hence we may probably conjecture, that so curiously an organized Creature as an Animal, is not the sudden Product of a Fluid or Colliquamentum, but does much rather proceed from an Animalcle of the same kind, and has all its little Members folded up according to their several Joints and Plicatures, which are afterwards enlarged and distended, as we see in Plants. Now tho' this Consideration alone may seem not to bear much weight; yet being join'd to the two former, they do mutually strengthen each other. And indeed all the Laws of Motion, which are as yet discovered, can give but a very lame account of the forming of a Plant or Animal. We see how wretchedly Des Cartes came off when he began to apply them to this Subject; they are formed by Laws yet unknown to Mankind; and it seems most probable, that the Stamina of all the Plants and Animals that have been, or ever shall be in the World, have been form'd, ab Origine Mundi, by the Almighty Creator within the first of each respective kind. And he who considers the Nature of Vision, that it does not give us the true magnitude, but the proportion of things; and that what seems to our naked Eye but a Point, may truly be made up of as many Parts as seem to us to be in the whole visible World, will not think this an absurd or impossible thing.
But the second thing which later Discoveries have made probable, is, that these Animalcles are originally in Semine Marium & non in Fœminis. And this I collect from these Considerations: 1. That there are innumerable Animalcula discover'd *in Semine Masculo