436 ON GENERATION. 



swallowing the fluid, though none of them was ever seen to 

 touch any of the excrements of their young. 



Fabricius spoke of this fluid as saline and acrimonious, be- 

 cause he believed it to be sweat. But what inconvenience, I 

 beseech you, were sweat to the chick, already covered with its 

 feathers ? if indeed any one ever saw a chicken sweat. Nor 

 do I think he could have said that the use of this fluid in 

 the egg was, by its moistening and lubrifying qualities, to 

 facilitate the birth of the chick ; for the drier and older the 

 shell of the egg, the more friable and fragile it becomes. 

 Finally, were it the sweat of the embryo, or foetus, it ought to 

 be most abundant nearest the period of parturition : the larger 

 the foetus and the more food it consumes, the more sweat must 

 it necessarily secrete. But shortly before the exclusion of the 

 chick from the egg, namely, about the nineteenth or twen- 

 tieth day, there is none of the fluid to be seen, because as 

 the chick grows it is gradually taken up ; so that if the thing 

 be rightly viewed, the fluid in question ought rather to be 

 regarded as nutriment than as excrement, particularly as he has 

 said that the chick in the egg breathes, and lets its chirping 

 be heard, which it certainly would not do were it surrounded 

 with water. 



But all experienced obstetricians know that the watery 

 fluid of the secundines is of no great use either in lubri- 

 cating the parts or in facilitating the progress of partu- 

 rition in the way Fabricius would have it. For the parts sur- 

 rounding the vulva are relaxed of themselves, and by a kind of 

 proper maturity at the full time, without any assistance from 

 the uterine waters ; and particularly those that offer the 

 greatest obstacles to the advance of the foetus, namely, the ossa 

 pubis and the os coccygis, to which the attention of the mid- 

 wife is especially directed in assisting the woman in labour. 

 For midwives are much less studious to anoint the soft parts 

 with any emollient salves, lest they tear, than careful to pull 

 the os coccygis outwards, a business in which, if the fingers 

 do not suffice, they have recourse to the uterine speculum, ap- 

 plied by the hand of the experienced surgeon, an instrument 

 having three sides or branches, one of which bearing on the os 

 coccygis, the other two on the ossa pubis, the business of disten- 

 sion is effected by force. For the head of the child that is about 



