HARVEY. 101 



as it was a demonstrated fact that the gastric veins were 

 largely absorptive, the lacteals appeared to him super- 

 fluous. He is not "obstinately wedded to his own 

 opinion," and does not doubt "but that many things, 

 now hidden in the well of Democritus, will by-and-by 

 be drawn up into day by the ceaseless industry of a 

 coming age." 



Late in the author's life, as we have seen, the work 

 on the " Generation of Animals " appeared ; but neither 

 physiological nor microscopical science was sufficiently 

 advanced to admit of the production of an enduring 

 work on a subject necessarily so abstruse as that of 

 generation. It was impossible, however, for so shrewd 

 and able an investigator as Harvey to work at a subject 

 even as difficult as this without leaving the impress of 

 his original genius. He first announced the general 

 truth, " Ornne animal ex ovo," and clearly proved that 

 the essential part of the egg, that in which the repro- 

 ductive processes begin, was not the chalazce, but the 

 cicatricula. This Fabricius had looked upon as a blemish, 

 a scar left by a broken peduncle. Harvey described 

 this little cicatricula as expanding under the influence 

 of incubation into a wider structure, which he called 

 the eye of the egg, and at the same time separating into 

 a clear and transparent part, in which later on, according 

 to him, there appeared, as the first rudiment of the 

 embryo, the heart, or punctum saliens^ together with the 



H 3 



