ON GENERATION. 287 



fervour quenched, do they take in their swelling sails, and, from 

 late pugnacity, grow timid and desponding ! Even during the 

 season of jocund masking in Venus's domains, male animals in 

 general are depressed by intercourse, and become submissive and 

 pusillanimous, as if reminded that in imparting life to others, 

 they were contributing to their own destruction. The cock alone, 

 replete with spirit and fecundity, still shows himself alert and 

 gay; clapping his wings, and crowing triumphantly, he sings the 

 nuptial song at each of his new espousals ! yet even he, after 

 some length of time in Venus's service, begins to fail ; like the 

 veteran soldier, he by and by craves discharge from active duty. 

 And the hen, too, like the tree that is past bearing, becomes 

 effete, and is finally exhausted. 



EXERCISE THE TWENTY-NINTH. 



Of the manner, according to Aristotle, in which a perfect and 

 fruitful egg is produced by the male and female fowl. 



Shortly before we said that a fruitful egg is not engendered 

 spontaneously, that it is not produced save by a hen, and by 

 her only through the concurrence of the cock. This agrees 

 with the matter of the following sentence of Aristotle : x " The 

 principles of generation have particular reference to male 

 and female ; the male as supplying the original of motion and 

 reproduction ; the female as furnishing the matter." 



In our view, however, an egg is a true generative seed, ana- 

 logous to the seed of a plant ; the original conception arising 

 between the two parents, and being the mixed fruit or product 

 of both. For as the egg is not formed without the hen, so is it 

 not made fruitful without the concurrence of the cock. 



We have therefore to inquire how the egg is produced by the 

 hen and is fertilized by the cock; for we have seen that hypenemic 

 eggs, and these animated too, are engendered by the hen, but 

 that they are not prolific without the intercourse of the cock. 

 The male and the female consequently, both set their mark 



' De Gen. Anim. lib. i, cap. 2. 



