Extract from Draft Versions of 'The Queries'

Generation is nothing else then separating a branch from the tree & giving it better nourishment. If a separated branch takes root in the earth or a separated twigg or bud by grafting or inoculation is nourished from the root of a young stock, it grows into a new tree as big a the tree from which it was separated being better nourished from a young root then from an old one. The seed of a tree has the nature of a branch or twig or bud, while it grows upon the tree it is a part of the tree: but if separated & set in the earth to be better nourished, the embryo or young tree conteined in it takes root & grows into a new tree. like manner The egg of a female with the embryo formed in it while it grows in the ovarium is a branch of the mothers body & partakes of her life, & The embryo is as capable of being separated from the mother & growing great by due nourishment as a branch or twigg or budd or seed of a tree is of being separated from the tree & growing into a new tree. For by the act of generation nothing more is done then to ferment the sperm of the female by the sperm of the male that it may thereby become fit nourishment for the Embryo. For the nourishment of all animals is prepared by ferment & the ferment is taken from animals of the same kind , & makes the nourishment subtile & spiritual. In adult animals the nourishment is fermented by the choler & pancreatic juice, both which come from the blood. The Embryo not being able to ferment its own nourishment which comes from the mothers blood has it fermented by the sperm which comes from the fathers blood, & by this nourishment it swells, drops off from & Ovarium & begins to grow with a life distinct from that of the mother. And in Oviparous creatures if the sperm of the female be not fermented with the sperm of the male the white & the yolk of the egg will not be fit nourishment for the Embryo. [So then the Embryo grows upon the body of the mother before generation as a twig grows upon a tree & all generation is nothing else than the preparation of due nourishments for the Embryo to grow with a distinct life when separated. ]

Now in all fermentation which generates spirits, the ferment abounds with a supprest acid which being more attracted by the other body forsakes its own <235v> to rush upon & dissolve the other & by the violence of the action breaks both its own particles & the particles of the other body into smaller particles & these by their subtilty volatility & continual digestion resolve the whole mass into into as subtile parts as it can be resolved by putrefaction. [And by this means bodies must lose their old form & texture & be destroyed & broken into the last parts before they can be formed.] For as an old house must be pulled down & its stones separated before a new house can be built out of its materials: So natural bodies must be dissolved broken & separated into their least parts by fermentation & putrefaction & lose their old form & texture before a new natural body can be formed out of them.

And when the nourishment is thus prepared by dissolution & subtiliation, the particles of the body to be nourished draw to themselves out of the nourishment the particles of the same density & nature with themselves. For particles of one & the same nature draw one another more strongly then particles of different natures do. And therefore in the bowels of the earth particles of the same nature are apt to assemble in the same masses & those of different natures in different masses. And when many particles of the same kind are drawn together out of the nourishment they will be apt to coalesce in such textures as the particles which drew them did before because they are of the same nature as we see in the particles of salts which if they be of the same kind always crystallize in the same figures. And for faciliating this assimilation of the nourishment & presering the nourished bodies from corruption it may be presumed that as electric attraction is excited by friction so it may be invigorated also by some other causes & particularly by some agitation caused in the electric spirit by the vegetable life of the particles of living substances: & the ceasing of this vigour upon death may be the reason why the death of Animals is accompanied with putrefaction.