Buffon's Natural History, Volume 03 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c.Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
History
Buffon's Natural History, Volume 03 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c.
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
Natural history
By the experiments we have just described, I was assured that females,
as well as males, have a seminal liquor which contains moving
substances; that these substances were not real animals, but only
living organic particles; and that those particles exist, not only in
the seminal liquors of the two sexes, but even in the flesh of animals,
and in the germs of vegetables. To discover whether all the parts of
animals, and all the germs of vegetables, contained living organic
particles, I caused infusions of the flesh of different animals to
be made, and of more than twenty kinds of seeds of different plants;
and after they had infused four or five days, in phials closely stopt
up, I had the satisfaction to see moving organic parts in them all;
some appeared sooner, and others later; some preserved their motion
for months together, while others were soon deprived of it; some
directly produced large moving globules, that had the appearance of
real animals, which changed their figures, separated, and became
successively smaller: others produced only small globules, whose
motions were very brisk; others produced filaments which lengthened
and seemed to vegetate, swelled, and afterwards thousands of moving
globules issued therefrom; but it is useless to detail my observations
on the infusion of plants, since Mr. Needham has published so excellent
a treatise on the subject. I read the preceding treatise to that able
naturalist, and often reasoned with him on the subject, particularly
on the probability that the germs of vegetables contained similar
moving bodies to those in the seed of male and female animals. He
thought those views sufficiently founded to deserve to be pursued; and
therefore began to make experiments on all parts of vegetables; and I
must own that the ideas I gave him on this subject have reaped greater
profit under his hands than they would have done from me. I could quote
many examples, but shall confine myself to one, because I indicated the
circumstance I am going to relate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account