fective juices of father or mother very much alter the germ, and produce, in the very parts where the father or mother is injured, important changes of bad formation, more or less, according to the capability of the germ, and its power of resistance, and shall the healthy juices of the parents in no manner affect the germ? Why should not the healthy juices be as active as the unhealthy? Why should they not introduce the same qualities, in miniature, which the father and mother have in the gross, since the father and mother assimilate the nutriment they receive to their own nature, and since the seminal juices are the spiritual extract of all their juices and powers, as we have just reason to conclude, from the most continued and accurate observations? Why should they not as naturally, and as powerfully, act upon the germ, to produce all possible resemblance; but which resemblance is infinitely varied, by differently changeable and changed circumstances, so that the germ continually preserves sufficient of its own original nature and properties, yet is always very distinct from the parents, and sometimes even seems to have derived very little from them; which may happen from a thousand accidental causes or changes? Hence,

family resemblance and dissimilarity being summarily considered, we shall find that nature, wholly employed to propagate, appears to be entirely directed to produce an equilibrium between the individual power of the germ, in its first formation, and the resembling power of the parents; that the originality of the first form of the germ may not wholly disappear before the too great power of resemblance to the parents, but that they may mutually concur, and both be subject to numberless circumstances, which may increase, or diminish, their respective powers, in order that the riches of variety, and the utility of the creature, and its dependance on the whole, and the general Creator, may be the greater, and more predominant *.

From all observations, on the resemblance between parents and children, which I have been enabled to make, it appears to me evident that neither the theories of Bonnet nor Buffon give any systematic explanation of phenomena, the existence of which cannot be denied by the sophistry of hypothesis. Diminish the difficulties as much as we will, facts will still stare us in the face. If the germ exist preformed in the mother, can Thoughts of a Friend.

this germ, at that time, have physiognomy? Can it, at that time, resemble the future, promiscuous, first, or second, father? Is it not perfectly indifferent to either?-Or, if the physiognomonical germ exist in the father, how can it, sometimes, resemble the mother, sometimes the father, often both, and often neither?

To me it appears that something germlike, or a whole capable of receiving the human form, must previously exist in the mother; but which is nothing more than the foundation of the future fatherly, or motherly, I know not what, and is the efficient cause of the future living fruit. This germlike something, which, most especially constituted agreeable to the human form, is analogous to the nature and temperature of the mother, receives a peculiar individual personal physiognomy, according to the propensities of the father or mother, the disposition of the moment of conception, and, probably, of many other future decisive moments. Still much remains to the freedom and predisposition of man. He may deprave, or improve, the state of the juices ; he may calm, or agitate, his mind, may awaken every sensation of love, and, by various modes, increase, or relax them. Yet I

think that neither the nature of the bones nor that of the muscles and nerves, consequently the character, depends on the physiognomonical preformation, preceding generation; at least they are far from depending on that alone, though I allow the organizable, the primitive form, always has a peculiar individuality, which is only capable of receiving certain subtile influences, and which must reject others. But of this enough.

VII.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NEW-BORN, THE DYING, AND THE DEAD.

I HAVE remarked, in some children, about an hour after a not difficult birth, a striking, though infantine, resemblance, in the profile, to the profile of the father. In a few days this resemblance had nearly disappeared. The impression of the open air, nutriment, and, perhaps, of position, had so far altered the outlines that the child seemed entirely changed.

Two of these children I saw dead, the one about six weeks, and the other about four years, old; and, nearly twelve hours after death, I observed the same profile which I had before remarked an hour after birth; with this difference, that the profile of the dead child, as is natural, was something more tense and fixed than the living. A part of this resemblance, however, on the third day, was remarkably gone.

I have seen one man of fifty, another of seventy years of age, who, during life, appeared not to have the least resemblance to