FECUNDATION OF ANIMALS. 125 



it is at a given time. It is in that manner that Bischoff made 

 his experiments. He copulated two animals, for instance, and 

 the instant copulation was over, killed the female to ascertain 

 how far the egg had proceeded at the time of the copulation. He 

 has killed in that way a number: of animals, at the very begin- 

 ning of the heat, and he found that there were no eggs dropped 

 from the ovary, and that it is only after a certain number of 

 hours during the heat that the ovary begins to drop the eggs, 

 and that it takes a certain time for those eggs to advance into 

 the viaduct. There is, then, this point to be determined, when 

 fecundation takes place. This opens such a wide field of 

 research, that I do not know in how many centuries we shall 

 know all we wish to know of it. 



There are animals that have a bifurcated uterus, in which 

 there are two ovaries, into which the eggs drop from the right 

 and left viaduct at the same time and in succession. There 

 may be two, three, four or five on one side, and two, three, four 

 or five on the other. In turtles I have ascertained that gener- 

 ally there are about as many on one side as on the other ; but I 

 have had cases in turtles in which I have found five eggs on one 

 side and one on the other, that had grown to maturity, and 

 would have been laid as ripe eggs, four from one ovary and one 

 from the other ; often five from one and one from the other. 

 But generally it was two or three on one side and as many on 

 the other, according to the practice of the species. The snap- 

 ping turtle lays as many as thirty or forty eggs, and will have 

 twenty on one side and five and twenty on the other ; and I 

 have seen those that had half a dozen on one side and the great 

 majority on the other — but never the full size that those animals 

 can produce. The little black turtle lays only two or three 

 eggs, one on one side and one on the other — perhaps a second 

 on one side— but generally one on each side ; while the yellow- 

 bellied turtle generally lays five, six or seven eggs, three or four 

 on one side and as many on the other. It has taken about ten 

 years to learn that from turtles alone. You cannot expect, 

 then, to find out these facts by asking the question. It will take 

 the work of teachers in the Agricultural College for generations 

 before we get all we want to know. 



Professor Chadbourne. I understood the Professor to say 

 that the eggs of birds are fecundated in the ovary ? 



