The Male Semen is a fluid of a _starch-ish_ consistency and of a whitish color. It has a peculiar odor, “like that of a bone while being filed—of a styptic and rather acrid taste,” (for physiologists use more senses than one in these researches), “and of greater specific gravity than any other fluid of the body.” Shortly after its escape, “it becomes liquid and translucent;” if suffered to evaporate, it dries into scurfy-looking substance. By being examined through a powerful microscope it is ascertained to be animated by an infinite number of animalcules; but they are only present in healthy semen, and consequently that fact is taken as a criterion of the virility of the secretion. President Wagner thus describes the germe of future animal life: “The seminal granules are colorless bodies with dark outlines, round and somewhat flattened in shape, and measuring from 1-300 to 1-500th of a line in diameter.” “The animalcules exist in the semen of all animals capable of procreation. They are diversified in form in all animals according to their species, but in man they are extremely small, scarcely surpassing the 1-50th, or almost the 1-40th of a line in breadth. This transparent and flattened body seldom exceeds from the 1-6th to the 1-800th of a line in length.” The annexed drawing exhibits the granules and animalcules of a human male being magnified from 900 to 1,000 times:— [Illustration: 1. Animalcules of a man, taken from the Vas Deferens, immediately after death. 2. Seminal Granules. 3. A bundle of Animalcules, as grouped together in the Testicle. 4. Seminal Globule. 5. Same surrounded by a cyst or bag.] The semen is never discharged pure; it is always diluted with the secretion from the prostate and other glands, and also the mucus of the urethra. A chymical analysis is thus given of 100 parts: Water 90 Mucilage 6 Phosphate of Lime 3 Soda 1 ——— 100 The semen may certainly be vitiated and diseased: the odor and color assume all the gradations of other secretions when in a morbid condition. Semen not discharged is supposed to be absorbed, thereby adding to the strength and nutriment of the economy; but as it is furnished for a specific purpose, and its secretion depends much upon the play of our animal passions, and as they are rarely permanently idle, there is not only the inducement that the fluid be furnished, but also emitted, and hence we have nocturnal emissions. These, to a degree, are salutary; but they may happen so frequently that the function becomes disordered and perverted, and in some individuals the semen (unconsciously to them) escapes during sleep, or on the slightest local excitement of riding, walking, or on the action of the bladder or rectum.