ON GENERATION. 465 



down by their weight. Serpents would also be hindered in 

 their alternate zig-zag movements by a multitude of eggs in 

 the abdomen. In the body of tortoises, with their hard and 

 girding shell, there is no room for any store or increase of eggs ; 

 nor would the abdomen of fishes suffice for the multitude of 

 eggs they must spawn were these to grow to any size. It was, 

 therefore, matter of necessity that those creatures should lay 

 their eggs imperfect. It seems most natural that an animal 

 should retain and cherish its conception in its interior until the 

 foetus it produces has come to maturity; but nature sees her- 

 self compelled, as it were, occasionally to permit the premature 

 birth of various eggs, and to provide them, without the body 

 of the parent, with the nourishment they require for their com- 

 plete development. As to everything that refers to the evolu- 

 tion of the foetus, all animals are engendered from an oviform 

 primordium ; I say oviform, not as meaning that it has the pre- 

 cise configuration of an egg, but the nature and constitution of 

 one ; this being common in generation, that the vegetal pri- 

 mordium whence the foetus is produced, including the nature of 

 an egg, corresponding in its proportions to the seed of a plant, 

 pre-exists. In all vegetal primordia, consequently, whether 

 eggs, or having the form of eggs, there are inherent the nature 

 and conditions of an egg, properties which the seeds of plants 

 have in common with the eggs of animals. The primordium of 

 any animal, whatsoever, is therefore called seed and fruit; and 

 in like manner the seed of every plant is spoken of as a kind 

 of conception or egg. 



And this is the reason why Aristotle says : J " Animals that 

 engender internally have something formed in the fashion of an 

 egg after their first conception : there is a fluid contained within 

 a delicate membrane, like en egg without the shell. And this 

 is the cause why the disorders of the conception, which are apt 

 to occur in the early period, are called discharges." Such a 

 discharge is particularly observed among women when they 

 miscarry in the course of the first or second month. I have 

 repeatedly seen such ova aborted at this time ; and such was 

 the one which Hippocrates has described as having been thrown 

 off by the female pipe-player in consequence of a fall. 



De Gen. Anim. lib. iii, cap. 9. 



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