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all these kind of creatures to be of a spontaneous birth, and no more to contribute to the procuction of one another, than Trees, and therefore to have no distinction of Sex. I have no reason to subscribe to his authority, since I have seen so many of them pair'd, and in the very act of Venery. That they engender then, is most certain; but whether those, that are thus found coupled, be one of them male, and the other female, or rather, as you observ'd, and published to the World in the Catalogue of Plants growing Wild about Cambridge, that they are both male and female and do in the act of generation both recieve into themselves, and immit a like penis (as it seems probable to any man that shall part them) I leave to further and more minute discovery to determine.
Moreover, we find in Aristotle a Circle of other parts, but of these no mention at all, However the Romans knew something extraordinary of these kind of Afnimals, that made them so choice of them, as to reckon them among their most delicate food, and to use all care and diligence to breed and fat them for their Tables at large described to us by Varro. Their tast and relish is none, methinks, of the most agreeable.
Of late, comparing Bussy's Histoire Amoureuse de Gaule with Petronius Arbiter, out of whom I was made to believe, he had taken two of his Letters word for word, besides other Love-intrigues; I found, in running him over, what satisfied me not a little in this very subject of Snailes; viz. That these very Animals, as well as other odd things in Nature, as Truffs, Mushroms, and no doubt too the Cossi or great Worms in the Oak (another Roman dainty) were made use of by the Ancients to incite Venery. You'l there find, that the distressed and feeble Lover prepares himself with a ragoust of Snailes necks (cervices Cochlearum;) and indeed in this part it is that these strange penes's are to be found.
Mr. Hook does as it were promise the Anatomy of this Insect.When this was written; Malpighius de Bombyce was not yet publisht. It were surely worth his pains, and the Learn'd World would be oblieged to him for a piece of this nature; nothing, accurately done of the inward part of any insect, being yet publisht.*
These
