With one or two exceptions, the representations in Soemmering’s work are simply those of the fœtus in its progressive advancement from the third week after fecundation, to the fifth or sixth month of gestation. Those representations have no reference to the whole ovum at those several periods of fecundation: and they are not coloured. Still they are, as he has stated, superior as a work of art to any that had appeared before. Soemmering tells us that he selected for his plates the best specimens of the human embryo, the best draughtsman, and the most skilful engraver; and that when he compared those plates with those of Trioenius, Albinus, Wrisberg, Hunter, and Denman, in order that he might better understand, explain, and perhaps correct his own: “_magnopere delectabatur_”, to find, on such a comparison, that the superiority of his plates was not inconsiderable. Well, then, let the reader who has the means of doing so, turn to the two folio plates of Soemmering, and then direct his attention to the fourteen plates contained in the present volume, and I will abide by their decision whether or no, in all such delineations as relate to either parallel or identical subjects in the two publications, the palm of superiority (in every circumstance of design, precision, and execution,) which Soemmering claimed for _his_ publication, ought not to be yielded by him to _another_ sent forth under the advantage of recent improvements in drawing, and a newly invented art admirably adapted for such imitations of nature. Independently of which advantages there is to be added the charm of colour—a circumstance which so greatly embellishes, without disfiguring, truth. With such impressions, I can feel no hesitation in giving publicity to my collection; and if in selecting, denominating, and appropriating to particular views of my own the several specimens I now publish, there should be found neither taste nor judgment, novelty nor utility, the blame must rest on me—but the merit of superiority will still remain to it as a work of art, which, in the department of morbid embryology, has at present no equal either in England or on the Continent.