84 EMBRYOLOGY IN ANTIQUITY [pt. ii 



the serpents egg, which the Latins call Anguinum. For in Summer 

 time yerely, you shall see an infinit number of snakes gather round 

 together into an heape, entangled and enwrapped one within another 

 so artificially, as I am not able to expresse the manner thereof; by 

 the means therefore, of the froth or salivation which they yeeld from 

 their mouths, and the humour that commeth from their bodies, 

 there is engendred the egg aforesaid. The priests of France, called 

 Druidae^, are of opinion, and so they deliver it, that these serpents 

 when they have thus engendred this egg do cast it up on high into 

 the aire by the force of their hissing, which being observed, there 

 must be one ready to catch and receive it in the fall again (before 

 it touch the ground) within the lappet of a coat of arms or souldiours 

 cassocks. They affirme also that the party who carrieth this egg away, 

 had need to be wel mounted upon a good horse and to ride away 

 upon the spur, for that the foresaid serpents will pursue him still, 

 and never give over until they meet with some great river betweene 

 him and them, that may cut off and intercept their chace. They ad 

 moreover and say that the only marke to know this egg whether it 

 be right or no, is this, that it will swim aloft above the water even 

 against the stream, yea though it were bound and enchased with a 

 plate of gold." But one must not be too severe upon Pliny, for he 

 and his translator, Philemon Holland, provide an entertainment 

 unequalled anywhere else. 



To some extent the same applies to Plutarch of Chaeronea, who 

 lived about the same time. Plutarch's writings, inspired as they were 

 throughout by the desire to commend the ancient religion of Greece 

 to a degenerate age, represent no milestone or turning-point in the 

 history of embryology, yet there is a passage in the Symposiaques, or 

 Table-questions which bears upon it. The third question of book 2 

 is "Whether was before, the hen or egg?" "This long time", says 

 Plutarch, "I absteined from eating egges, by reason of a certaine 

 dream I had, and the companie conceived an opinion or suspition 

 of me that there were entred into my head the fantasies and super- 

 stitions of Orpheus or Pythagoras, and that I abhorred to eat an 

 egge for that I believed it to be the principle and fountaine of genera- 

 tion." He then makes the various characters in the dialogue speak 

 to the motion, and one of them, Firmus, ends his speech thus, "And 



^ For further information about the serpent's eggs of the Druids, see Kendrick; they 

 were probably fossil echinoderms. 



