that the whole individual is formed by the union of small resembling individuals. But, it may be asked, were not all these organized bodies contained in the seed, and may not the order of their expansion be traced from that source, for the bud which first appeared was evidently surmounted by another similar bud, which was not expanded till the second year, and soon to the third; and consequently the seed may be said really to contain all the buds, or young trees that would be produced for a hundred years, or till the dissolution of the tree itself? This seed it is also plain not only contained all the small organized bodies which one day must constitute the individual tree, but also every seed, every individual, and every succession of seeds and individuals, to the total destruction of the species. This is the principal difficulty, and we shall examine it with the strictest attention. It is certain that the seed produces by the single expansion of the bud, or germ, it contains, a young tree the first year, and that this tree existed in miniature in that bud, but it is not equally certain that the bud of the second year, and those of the succeeding, were all contained in the first seed, no more than that every organized body and seed, which must succeed to the end of the world, or to the destruction of the species, were so. This opinion supposes a progress to infinity, and forms, of each individual, a source of eternal generations. The first seed, in that case, must have contained every plant of its kind which have existed or ever will exist; and the first man must actually and individually have contained in his loins every man which has or will appear on the face of the earth. Each seed, and each animal, agreeable to this opinion, must have possessed within an infinite posterity. But the more we suffer ourselves to wander into these kind of reasonings, the more we lose the sight of truth in the labyrinth of infinity; and instead of clearing up and solving the question, we confuse and involve it in more obscurity; it is placing the object out of sight, and afterwards saying it is impossible to see it.