It is not known who first proposed this hypothesis; but strange as it may appear, it has had the support of such names as Bonnet, Haller and Spallanzani, and met with a favorable reception in the middle of the last century. Agreeable to this hypothesis, our common mother, Eve, contained a number of homuncules (little men) one within another, like a nest of boxes, and all within her ovaries, equal to all the number of births that have ever been, or ever will be, not to reckon abortions. Were I to bring forward all the facts and arguments that have been advanced in support of this idea, it seems to me I should fail to convince sound minds of its correctness; as to arguments against it, they surely seem uncalled for. Having now presented several hypotheses of generation, some as to the manner in which the semen reaches or influences the ovary, and others as to the rudiments of the foetus, I shall now bring together those views which, upon the whole, appear to me the most satisfactory. I believe, with Dr. Dewees, that a set of absorbent vessels extend from the innermost surface of the _labia externa_, and from the vagina to the ovary, the whole office of which is to take up the semen or some part thereof, and convey it to the ovary. I believe, with Leeuwenhoek, that the seminal animalculae are the proper rudiments of the foetus, and are perhaps of different sexes; that in cases of impregnation one of them is carried not only to, but into a vesicle of an ovary, which is in a condition to receive and be duly affected by it.* It is here surrounded by the albuminous fluid which the vesicle contains. This fluid being somewhat changed in its qualities by its new-comer, stimulates the minute vessels of the parts which surround it, and thus causes more of this fluid to be formed; and while it affords the animalcule material for its development, it puts the delicate membrane of the ovary which retains it in its place upon the stretch, and finally bursts forth surrounded probably by an exceedingly delicate membrane of its own. This membrane, with the albuminous fluid it contains and the animalcule in the center of it, constitutes the ovum or egg. It is received by the fimbriated extremity of the Fallopian tube, which by this time has grasped the ovary, and is by this tube slowly conveyed into the uterus, to the inner surface of which it attaches itself, through the medium of the membrane, which is formed by the uterus itself in the interim between impregnation and the arriving of the ovum in the way I have just mentioned.