The theories which have been advanced to explain the manner in which the human species is continued and reproduced are very numerous. Including the hypotheses of the ancient philosophers, some two hundred and fifty have been promulgated by the greatest thinkers of all times. The older ones do not deserve mention, as they are replete with absurdities. Such, for instance, is that of Pythagoras, which supposed that a vapor descended from the brain and formed the embryo. The Scythians therefore took blood from the veins behind the ears to produce impotence and sterility. Modern science has shown the total error of this and many other views formerly entertained on this subject. Has galvanism or electricity any share in the mysterious function? Some among the modern physiologists have supposed that there is an electrical or magnetic influence which effects generation. Even within a few months, Dr. Harvey L. Byrd, Professor of Obstetrics in the Medical Department of Washington University of Baltimore, has asserted that he has 'every reason for believing that fecundation or impregnation is always an electrical phenomenon; ... it results from the completion of an electric circle,--the union of positive and negative electricities.' This, however, is not accepted by all as the dictum of modern science. Physiology has clearly established that the new being is the result of contact between the male element, an independent, living animal, on the one part, and the female element, a matured egg, on the other, involving the union of the contents of two peculiar cells. Without such contact, fecundation cannot take place. The only matter of practical moment in connection with this most interesting function which we have to announce, is the influence of the mind on the offspring at the time of generation. This influence has long been remarked in regard to animals as well as men. Jacob was aware of it when he made his shrewd bargain with Laban for 'all the speckled and spotted cattle' as his hire. For we are told that then 'Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree, and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering-troughs, when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks towards the ringstraked and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle. And it came to pass, whenever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods. But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.'