ANALOGY OF BIRDS. 123 



the sperm. It is well known, from the observations of Baer, 

 that every female animal carries eggs, as well as birds, and that 

 those eggs have to be fecundated in order to produce offspring ; 

 and of late, Bischoff has made experiments to ascertain when 

 the eggs descend from the ovary, and are brought into the lower 

 part of the female sexual organs, where they can be fecundated. 

 Now, conception is nothing but the contact between these eggs, 

 which descend from the ovary, with the sperm of the male at 

 the time of copulation ; and you have got to make that contact 

 in such part of the female organ, that the egg can remain there, 

 attached to the wall of the uterus, form its placenta, and grow ; 

 and unless all these conditions are combined, you can never 

 have a female conceive. When does that separation of the egg 

 from the ovary take place ? When does the egg begin to be 

 laid ? That is the question. I would go back a little to the 

 birds, where we know something. All the eggs that are laid 

 by a hen have been fecundated, if fecundated at all, before the 

 shell was formed, otherwise no fecundation would take place. 

 In what part of the organs of the hen were the eggs, when that 

 fecundation was successful, which made the egg come down to 

 receive its white, its albumen, and its shell, to be laid as a 

 fertile egg ? It is in the ovary that fecundation takes place. 

 For that purpose, the sperm has to travel all the way up the 

 channel to the ovary. How is this done ? It is not by the 

 length of the male organ, for the birds have none ; and you see 

 it would be a mere misapprehension of the mode in which fecun- 

 dation takes place, to suppose that the depth to which the sperm 

 penetrates could be measured by the length of the male organ. 

 It is not so. The sperm is ejected into the female organ, it may 

 be at the very edge of it, and is carried up by the nature of the 

 internal surface of the female organ, as high as the ovary, where 

 it fecundates the egg of the bird before it is detached. In the 

 turtle, the egg remains in the ovary, after it is first fecundated, 

 four years, before it is detached, brought down, and laid. In 

 the bird, the consequence of the fecundation and of the trans- 

 mission of the sperm to the ovary is, that the egg is detached 

 and falls into the fallopian tube, and is brought down through 

 into the cloaca, where it shortly receives its shell, and is then 

 laid. You can see, then, that in birds, which lay their eggs one 

 after the other, and in animals, which lay many in rapid succes- 



