Zoonomia, Or, The Laws of Organic Life: In Three Parts, Volume 1

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by D. Carlisle, for Thomas and Andrews, 1803 - Evolution

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Page 124 - And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth.
Page 395 - ... would it be too bold to imagine that in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, — would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament,1 which the great First...
Page 397 - ... described? And that the productive living filament of each of those tribes was different originally from the other? Or, as the earth and ocean were probably peopled with vegetable productions long before the existence of animals; and many families of these animals long before other families of them, shall we conjecture that one and the same kind of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life?
Page 4 - The word idea has various meanings in the writers of metaphysic : it is here used simply for those notions of external things, which our organs of sense bring us acquainted with originally ; and is defined, a contraction, or motion, or configuration of the fibres, which constitute the immediate organ of sense.
Page 274 - Prometheus, which feems indeed to have been invented by phy. ficians in thofe ancient times, when all things were clothed in hieroglyphic, or in fable. Prometheus was painted as ftealing fire from heaven, which might well reprefent the inflammable fpirit produced by fermentation ; which may be faid to animate or enliven the man of clay : whence the conquefts of Bacchus, as well as the temporary mirth and noife of his devotees.
Page 392 - ... changes produced probably by the exuberance of nourishment supplied to the fetus, as in monstrous births with additional limbs; many of these enormities of shape are propagated, and continued as a variety at least, if not as a new species of animal. I have seen a breed of cats with an additional claw on every foot; of poultry also with an additional claw, and with wings to their feet; and of others without rumps. Mr. Buffon...
Page 78 - ... degree of delicacy at the extremities of the fingers and thumbs, and in the lips. The sense of touch is thus very commodiously disposed for the purpose of encompassing smaller bodies, and for adapting itself to the inequalities of larger ones. The figure of...
Page 395 - ... the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity-, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!
Page 375 - Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a new animal, but is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent; since a part of the...
Page 393 - Fifthly, from their first rudiment, or primordium, to the termination of their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires and aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations, or of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity.

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