[ 



GENERATION OF ANIMALS. II. vii. 



who are too well fed and in women who are too fat 

 the seminal residue is used up for the benefit of the 

 bodily system, so that no semen is formed in the men 

 and no menstrual discharge in the women ; some- 

 times (ii) because of disease ; the semen which the 

 men emit is fluid and cold, and the discharges of 

 the women are poor and full of morbid residues. But 

 in very many cases, in both sexes, this drawback is 

 due to deformities in the parts and regions employed 

 for intercourse. Some of these deformities are cur- 

 able, some are not ; those, howev^er, who have become 

 deformed during the original constitution of the 

 embryo, have a special tendency to remain infertile 

 throughout ; thus, mascuUne-looking women are 

 produced in whom- the menstrual discharges do not 

 occur, and effeminate men whose semen is thin and 

 cold. On this account the water-test is quite a fair 

 one for infertiUty in the male semen, because the 

 thin, cold semen quicklv diffuses itself on the surface, 

 whereas the fertile semen sinks to the bottom ; for 

 though it is true that a substance which has been 

 concocted is hot," yet that which has been set and 

 compacted and possesses thickness ** has certainly 

 undergone concoction. Women are tested (a) by 

 means of pessaries : the test is whether the scent of 

 the pessary penetrates upwards from below to the 

 1 .reath which is exhaled from the mouth ; (6) by 

 means of colours rubbed on to the eyes, the test being 

 v.hether they colom- the sahva. If the required 

 result is not forthcoming, it is proved that the passages 

 of the body through which the residue is secreted 

 have got obstructed and have closed up, for of all the 

 regions in the head the eyes are the most seminal, 



* As is shown by its sinking. Cf. 765 b 2. 



247 



