stands charged with asserting many things experience has found to be false. He pretended that a judgment might be formed of the number of foetuses contained in the matrix by the number of cicatrices, or empty follicules, in the ovary, which is not true, as we may see by the observations of Verrheyen,[K] and by those of M. Mery,[L] and by some of De Graaf's own observations, where he found fewer eggs in the matrix than cicatrices in the ovaries. Besides, we shall make it appear that what he says concerning the separation of the eggs, and the manner in which they descend into the matrix, is not exact; that no eggs exist in the female testicles; that what is seen in the matrix is not an egg; and that nothing can be worse founded than the systems endeavoured to be established on the observations of this famous anatomist. [J] See Observ. Justi Schraderi, Amst. 1674. [K] Vol. I. chap. iii. Brussels edit. 1710. [L] Hist. of the Academ. 1704. This pretended discovery of eggs in the testicles of females attracted the attention of most anatomists; they, however, only met with small bladders in the testicles of female viviparous animals, these they did not hesitate to look on as real eggs: they therefore gave the name of _ovaries_ to the testicles, and called the vesicles eggs, They also said, with De Graaf, that there are eggs of different sizes in the ovarium; that the largest in the ovarium of women was not above the size of a small pea; that they were very small in the young, but increased with age and intercourse with men; that twenty might be counted in each ovarium; that these eggs are fecundated in the ovarium by the spirited part of the seminal liquor of the male; that afterwards they loosen and fall into the matrix, where the foetus is formed, from the internal substance of the egg and the placenta of the external matter; that the glandular substance, which does not exist in the ovarium till after a fruitful copulation, serves to compress the egg, and make it quit the ovarium, &c. But Malpighius having examined things more minutely, detected many of their errors before they were even received; yet most physicians adopted the sentiments of De Graaf, without any attention to the observations of Malpighius; which, notwithstanding, are very important, and to which his scholar Valisnieri has given a great deal of weight. Malpighius and Valisnieri, of all naturalists, speak with the greatest foundation on the subject of generation. We shall therefore give an account of their experiments and remarks, to which we cannot pay too much attention. Malpighius having examined a great number of the testicles of cows and other female animals, affirms that he found vesicles of different sizes in the testicles of all of them, whether young or adults; these vesicles are inclosed by a thick membrane, in the inner parts of which there are blood-vessels, filled with a kind of lymph, or liquor, which hardens by the heat of the fire like the white of an egg.