ON GENERATION. 267 



seen the chick raise up the top of the shell upon its head and 

 remove it. 



We have gone at length into some of these matters, as think- 

 ing that they were not without all speculative interest, as we 

 shall show by and by. The arguments of Fabricius are easily 

 answered. For I admit that the chick in ovo produces sounds, 

 and these perchance may even have something of the implora- 

 tive in their nature ; but it does not therefore follow that the 

 shell is broken by the mother. Neither is the bill of the chick 

 so soft, nor yet so far from the shell, that it cannot pierce 

 through its prison walls, particularly when we see that the shell, 

 for the reasons assigned, is extremely brittle. Neither does 

 the chick always keep its head under its wing, so as to be 

 thereby prevented from breaking the shell, but only when it 

 sleeps or has died. For the creature wakes at intervals and 

 scrapes and kicks, and struggles, pressing against the shell, 

 tearing the investing membranes, and chirps, (and that this is 

 done whilst petitioning for assistance I willingly concede,) 

 all of which things may readily be heard by any one who will 

 use his ears. And the hen listening attentively when she hears 

 the chirping deep within the egg does not break the shell, but 

 she turns the egg with her feet and gives the chick within an- 

 other and a more commodious position. But there is no oc- 

 casion to suppose that the chick by his chirping informs his 

 mother of the propriety of breaking the shell, or seeks deli- 

 verance from it. For very frequently for two days before the 

 exclusion you may hear the chick chirping within the shell. 

 Neither is the mother, when she turns the egg, looking for the 

 proper place to break it ; but as the child when uncomfortably 

 laid in his cradle is restless and whimpers and cries, and his 

 fond mother turns him this way and that, and rocks him till he 

 is composed again, so does the hen when she hears the chick 

 restless and chirping within the egg, and feels it, when hatched, 

 moving uneasily about in the nest, immediately raise herself and 

 observe that she is not pressing on it with her weight, or keeping 

 it too warm, or the like, and then with her bill and her feet 

 she moves and turns the egg until the chick within is again at 

 its ease and quiet. 



