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The reafon he gives of this, I cannot at al! allow of, as being very ill grounded ;and therefore I {hall not trouble niyfelf to confute, or fo much as name it.
As for the heart of the land tortoife, it was preferved in fpirit of wine, and all thethree ventricles thereof flit and opened; fo that I had not all the fatisfadtion I couldhave wifhed : but the left ventricle in this animal had no artery' belonging to it, butdid receive only the blood, which defcended from the lungs, and convey it by theforamen ovale into the right ventricle : that the third or middle ventricle was only anappendix to the right, and had the pulmonic artery ifluing from it. So that the bloodin a tortoife was in a manner circulated like that in a foetus, through the body, thelungs as it were or in good part flighted.
This thought of Monfieur Merrie’s has made a great breach betwixt MonfieurVerney and himfelf; for which reafon I had not that freedom of converfation as Icould have wifhed with both of them ; but it is to be hoped there may come goodfrom an honefl emulation.
Two Englifh gentlemen came to vifit me, Mr. Bennis and Mr. Probie. They werelodged near the royal garden, where Monfieur Verney dwells, and makes his anato-mies, who in three months time {hewed al! the parts of the body to them. He hadfor this purpofe at lead twenty human bodies, from the gallow's, the chatelet, (wherethofe are expofed who are found murdered in the ftreets, which is a very commonbufinefs at Paris ) and from the holpitals.
They told me, Monfieur Verney pretended to fhew them a valve, which did hinderblood from falling back into the right ventricle by the foramen ovale. This valve theyfaid he compared to the papillae in the kidneys, mufeuious and flefhy : that if windwas blown into the vena pulmonalis, it did not pals through the foramen ovale, butflop there, by reafon of the valve : that he did believe contrary to Mr. Merrie, thatno blood did circulate through the lungs in an embrio.
Again, in another converfation with Monfieur Merrie, he {hewed me the blownheart of an embrio, and that of a girl of feven years old. I faw clearly, that the {kinof the fuppofed valve of the foramen ovale, was as it were fufpended with two liga-ments : and that in the girl’s, the two fides of the foramen ovale were drawn oneover the other, and fo clofed the hole ; but were eafily to be feparated again bv abriftle thrull betwixt them.
Alfo it feemed to me, that this membrane in an embrio might cover the foramenovale, like the membrana niclans in a bird’s eye, that is, be drawn over it, and fohinder the ingrefs of the blood from the vena cava, as often as the right auricle beats :but the dilating itfelf might give way to the defeending blood of the vena pulmonalis;and poflibly, the embrio living as it were the life of an infefl, can by this artificecommand the heart.
I remember in difeourfe that day with him, he told me, that Monfieur Verney hadan old cat, and a young kitling jull born, put into the air-pump before the AcademieRoyalle de Sciences: that the cat died after fixteen pumps, but the kitling furvivedfive hundred pumps; which favours in fome meafure the command young animalshave of their hearts.
At another vifit Monfieur Merrie obligingly procured for me the heart of a humanembrio, with the lungs intire. He tried before me the experiment upon blowing,and alfo fyringing wat-.r into the aorta, both which filled the auricles and ventricles,and freely came out at the vena cava only. Then he opened the right auricle andventricle, where the foramen ovale was open only at one corner, not the tenth part
of