400 ON GENERATION. 



formerly consisted, and this, taking place according to all their 

 dimensions, they are distinguished as regards their parts, and 

 are organized at the same time that they grow. 



But to engender the chick is in truth nothing else than to 

 fashion or make its several members and organs, which, although 

 they are produced in a certain order, and some are postgenatc 

 to others, the less important to the more principal organs 

 still, whilst the organs themselves are all distinguished, they are 

 not engendered in such wise and order that the similar parts 

 are first formed, and the organic parts afterwards compounded 

 from them ; or so that certain composing parts existed before 

 other compounded parts which must be fashioned from them. 

 For although the head of the chick and the rest of the body 

 exist in the shape of a mucus or soft jelly, whence each of the 

 parts is afterwards formed in sequence, and all are of similar con- 

 stitution in the first instance, still are they simultaneously pro- 

 duced and augmented in virtue of the same processes directed 

 by the same agent ; and in the same proportion as the matter 

 resembling jelly increases, in like measure are the parts distin- 

 guished; for they are engendered, transmuted, and formed 

 simultaneously; similar and dissimilar parts exist together, and 

 from a small similar organ a larger one is produced. The thing, 

 in short, is not otherwise than it is among vegetables, where 

 from the straw proceeds the ear, the awns, and the grain dis- 

 tinctly, severally, and yet together ; or as trees put forth buds, 

 from which^are produced leaves, flowers, fruit, and finally 

 seed. 



All this we learn from an attentive study of the parts and 

 processes of the incubated egg, inasmuch, as from things done, 

 actions or operations are apprehended; from operations, facul- 

 ties or forces, and from these we then infer the artificer, gene- 

 rator, or cause. In the generation of the pullet, consequently, 

 the actions or faculties of the engendering cause enumerated 

 by Fabricius, namely, the metamorphic and formative, do not 

 differ in kind, or even in the relation of sequence, as that one 

 is first and the other second, but, as Aristotle is wont to say, are 

 one and the same in reason ; not as happens with reference to 

 the actions of the nutritive faculty, attraction, concoction, dis- 

 tribution and apposition, to wit, which all come into play in 

 several places at several times. Were this not so, the engen- 



