ON GENERATION. 215 



They who are curious in such matters say that if this cavity be 

 in the point or end of the egg it will produce a male, if towards 

 the side, a female. This much is certain : if the cavity be small 

 it indicates that the egg is fresh-laid ; if large, that it is stale. 

 But we shall have occasion anon to say more on this head. 



There is a white and very small circle apparent in the in- 

 vesting membrane of the vitellus, which looks like an inbranded 

 cicatrice, which Fabricius therefore calls cicatricula; but he 

 makes little of this spot, and looks on it rather as an accident 

 or blemish than as any essential part of the egg. The cica- 

 tricula in question is extremely small ; not larger than a tiny 

 lentil, or the pupil of a small bird's eye ; white, flat, and cir- 

 cular. This part is also found in every egg, and even from its 

 commencement in the vitellarium. Fabricius, therefore, is mis- 

 taken when he thinks that this spot is nothing more than the 

 trace or cicatrice of the severed peduncle, by which the egg was 

 in the first instance connected with the ovary. For the pe- 

 duncle, as he himself admits, is hollow, and as it approaches 

 the vitellus expands, so as to surround or embrace, and inclose 

 the yelk in a kind of pouch : it is not connected with the yelk 

 in the same way as the stalks of apples and other fruits are 

 infixed, and so as to leave any cicatrice when the yelk is cast 

 loose. And if you sometimes find two cicatriculse in a large 

 yelk, as Fabricius states, this might, perhaps, lead to the pro- 

 duction of a monster and double foetus, (as shall be afterwards 

 shown), but would be no indication of the preexistence of a 

 double peduncle. He is, however, immensely mistaken when 

 he imagines that the cicatricula serves no purpose ; for it is, in 

 fact, the most important part of the whole egg, and that for 

 whose sake all the others exist; it is that, in a word, from which 

 the chick takes its rise. Parisanus, too, is in error, when he 

 contends that this is the semen of the cock. 



