ON GENERATION. 275 



imitable providence and art, and yet in an incomprehensible 

 manner, always obtaining what is best both for simple being 

 and for well-being, for protection also and for ornament. And all 

 this not only in the fruitful egg which it fecundates, but in the 

 hypenemic egg which it nourishes, causes to increase, and pre- 

 serves. Nay, it is not merely the vitellus in the vitellarium 

 or egg-bed, but the smallest speck whence the yelk is produced, 

 of no greater size than a millet or a mustard-seed, that it 

 nourishes and makes to grow, and finally envelopes with al- 

 bumen, and furnishes with chalazse, and surrounds with mem- 

 branes and a shell. For it is probable that even the barren 

 egg, whilst it is included within the fowl and is connected with 

 her, is nourished and preserved by its internal and inherent prin- 

 ciple, and made to increase (not otherwise than the eggs of 

 fishes and frogs, exposed externally, increase and are perfected), 

 and to be tranformed from a small speck into a yelk, and 

 transferred from the ovary to the uterus (though it have no 

 connexion with the uterus), there to be endued with albumen, 

 and at length to be completed with its chalazse, membranes, and 

 shell. 



But what that may be in the hypenemic egg as well as in 

 the fruitful one, which in a similar manner and from the same 

 causes or principles produces the same effects; whether it be the 

 same soul, or the same part of the soul, or something else inherent 

 in both, must be worthy of inquiry : it seems probable, however, 

 that the same things should proceed from similar causes. 



Although the egg whilst it is being produced is contained 

 within the fowl, and is connected with the ovary of the mother 

 by a pedicle, and is nourished by blood-vessels, it is not there- 

 fore to be spoken of as a part of the mother ; nor is it to be 

 held as living and vegetating through her vital principle, but 

 by a virtue peculiar to itself and an internal principle ; just as 

 fungi, and mosses, and the misletoe, which although they ad- 

 here to vegetables and are nourished by the same sap as their 

 leaves and germs, still form no part of these vegetables, nor are 

 they ever so esteemed. Aristotle, with a view to meeting these 

 difficulties, concedes a vegetative soul to the egg, even to the 

 hypenemic one. He says i 1 " Females, too, and all things that 

 live are endowed with the vegetative virtue of the soul, as has 



1 Gener. Anim. lib. iii, cap. 7. 



