within themselves manifested in
the incrassations upon incubation.... Rotten egges will not bee
made hard by incubation or decoction, as being destitute of that
spiritt, or having the same vitiated.... How far the coagulating
principle operateth in generation is evident from eggs wch will
never incrassate without it. From the incrassation upon incubation
when heat diffuseth the coagulum, from the _chalaza_ or gallatine
wh. containeth 3 nodes, the head, heart, & liver.[29]

It cannot be said that Browne attained to any great generalizations
regarding embryogeny on the basis of his rather naive experiments, but
they are indicative of the effects of the "new learning" in one area of
biology. Actually, Browne appears more comfortable in the search for
patterns conforming to the quincunx, as in _The Garden of Cyrus_, and
although he may well have been in search of something like the later
Unity of Type, he uses his amassed details of scientific knowledge most
effectively in support of nonscientific propositions. Thus, he uses the
facts of embryonic development, alchemy, and insect metamorphosis as a
part of his argument for the immortality of the human soul:

...for we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the actions
of the elements, and the malice of diseases in that other world,
the truest Microcosme, the wombe of our mother; for besides that
generall and common existence wee are conceived to hold in our
Chaos, and whilst wee sleepe within the bosome of our causes, wee
enjoy a being and life in three distinct worlds, wherin we receive
most manifest graduations: In that obscure world and wombe of our
mother, our time is short, computed by the Moone, yet longer than
the dayes of many creatures that behold the Sunne; our selves being
yet not without life, sense, and reason; though for the
manifestation of its actions it awaits the opportunity of objects;
and seemes to live there but in its roote and soule of vegetation;
entring afterwards upon the scene of the world, wee arise up and
become another creature, performing the reasonable actions of man,
and obscurely manifesting that part of Divinity in us, but not in
complement and perfection, till we have once more cast our
secondine, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into
the last world, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper