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Show 52 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO II. No nutrient streams from Beauty's orbs improve These orphan babes of solitary love; Birth after birth the line unchanging runs, And fathers live transmitted in their sons; Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds, The same their manners, and the same their minds. 110 Till, as erelong successive buds decay, And insect-shoals successive pass away, Increasing wants the pregnant parents vex With the fond w·ish to form a softer sex; 'Vhose milky rills with pure ambrosial food Might charm and cherish their expected brood. A sifter se . r. 1. 114. The first buds of trees raised from seed die annually, and are succeeded by new buds by solitary r eproduction; which are larger or more perfect for several successive years, and then they produce sexual flowers, which are succeeded by seminal reproduction. The same occurs in bulbous rooted pl ants r aised from seed; they die annually, and produce others rather more perfect than the parent _for several years, and then produce sexual flowers. The Aphis is in a similar manner hatched from an egg in the vernal months, and produces a viviparous offspring without sexual intercourse for nine or ten successive generations; and then the progeny is both male and female, which cohabit, and from these new females are produced eggs, which endure the winter; the same process probably occurs in many other insects. REPRODUCTION OF LIFE. 53 CAN'l'O II. The potent wish in the productive hour Calls to its aid Imagination's power, 0, er embryon throngs with mystic charm presides, And sex from sex the nascent wor]d divides, 120 With soft affections warms the callow trains, And gives to laughing !Jove his nymphs and swains; I magination's po•wer. 1. 118. The manner in which the similarity of the. pro~e ny. to t~e parent, and the sex of it, are produced by the power of Jmagmatwn, 1s treated of in Zoonomia. Sect. 39. 6. 3. It is 110t to be unde rstood, that the :first living fibres, which are to form an animal are produced by imagination, with any similarity of fo rm to th~ future animal;. but with appetencies or propensities, which shall produce by accretwn of parts the similarity of form and feat ure, or of sex, corresponding with the imagination of the father. 1-I is nymphs and swains. 1. 122. The arguments which have been adduced to ~ho w, that mankind and quadrupeds were formerly in an hermaphrodite state, are first deduced from the present existence of breasts and nipples in all the males ; which latter swell on t itillation like t~os~ of the fe1~1a!es, and which are sajd t o contain a milky fluid at thetr btrth; and It IS affirmed, that some men have g iven milk to their children in desert countries, where the mother has perished; as the male pigeon is said to give a k ind of milk from hi s stomach alono· with the regurgitated food, to the young doves, as mentioned j~ Additional Note IX. on Storge. Secondly, from the apparent progress of many animals to greate1· perfection, as in some insects, as the fl ies with t \Vo win o·s termed b ' Diptera; which have rudiments of two other wings, called hal teres } or poisers ; and in many fl owers which have ru diments of new stamina, or filaments without anthers on them. See Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Curcuma, Nate, and theN ate on I. ~04 of Canto I. of this work. |