484 ON GENERATION. 



it connected with the uterus; there is only at its upper and 

 blunter part a kind of delicate mossy or woolly covering which 

 stands for the rudiments of the future placenta. The inner 

 aspect is smooth and polished, and covered with numerous rami- 

 fications of the umbilical vessels. In the third month this ovum 

 exceeds a goose's egg in size, and includes a perfect embryo of 

 the length of two fingers' breadths. In the fourth month it is 

 larger than an ostrich's egg. All these things I have noted 

 in the numerous careful dissections of aborted ova which I have 

 made. 



In the way above indicated do the hind and doe, affected by 

 a kind of contagion, finally conceive and produce primordia, 

 of the nature of eggs, or the seeds of plants, or the fruit of 

 trees, although for a whole month and more they had exhibited 

 nothing in the uterus, the conception being perfected about the 

 18th, at furthest, the 21st of November, and having its seat 

 now in the right, now in the left horn, occasionally in both at 

 once. The ovum at this time is full of a colliquate matter, 

 transparent, crystalline, similar to that fluid which in the hen's 

 egg we have called the colliquament or eye, of far greater purity 

 than that fluid in which the embryo by and by floats, and con- 

 tained within a proper tunic of extreme tenuity, and orbicular 

 in form. In the middle of the ovum, vascular ramifications and 

 the punctum saliens the first or rudimentary particle of the 

 foetus and nothing else, are clearly to be perceived. This is 

 the first genital part, which, once constituted, is not only already 

 possessed by the vegetative, but also by the motive soul; and 

 from this are all the other parts of the foetus, each in its order, 

 generated, fashioned, disposed, and endowed with life, almost in 

 the same manner as we have described the chick to be produced 

 from the colliquament of the egg. 



Both of the humours mentioned are present in the concep- 

 tions of all viviparous animals, and are regarded by many as the 

 excrements of the foetus, one the urine, the other the sweat, 

 although neither of them has any unpleasant taste, and they are 

 always and at all periods present in conceptions, even before a 

 particle of the foetus has been produced. 



Of the membranes investing the two fluids, of which there 

 are only two, the outer is called the chorion, the inner the 

 amnion. The chorion includes the whole conception, and ex- 



