GENERATION OF ANIMALS, IV. vi. 



are born early. This is plain, indeed, in the case of 

 seven months' children : in some of them, vihen they 

 are born, because they are imperfect, even the pass- 

 ages {e.g., those of the ears and nostrils) are often not 

 yet fully articulated ; as the child grows, however, 

 they become articulated. Many such individuals 

 survive. 



In human beings, more males are born deformed 

 than females ; in other animals, there i§ no pre- 

 ponderance either way. The reason is that in human 

 beings the male is much hotter in its nature than 

 the female. On that account male embryos tend 

 to move about more than female ones,** and owing to 

 their moving about they get broken more, since a 

 young creature can easily be destroyed owing to its 

 •weakness. And it is due to this self-same cause that 

 the perfecting of female embryos is inferior to that 

 of male ones, (since their uterus is inferior in con- 

 dition.* In other animals, however, the perfecting 

 of female embryos is not inferior to that of male 

 ones : they are not any later in developing than the 

 males, as they arey in women, for while still within 

 the mother, the female takes longer to develop 

 than the male does ^ ; though once birth has taken 

 place everything reaches its perfection sooner in 

 females than in males — e.g., puberty, maturity, old 

 age — because females are weaker and colder in 



° Cf. H.A. 584 a 26 flF. 



* i.e., it is colder, because the nature of women is colder 

 than that of other female animals, as is stated immediately 

 above, and below ; cf. also 776 a 10, where women are said 

 to be alone in suffering from uterine affections, again owing 

 to lack of heat, resulting in inability to concoct ; and 

 775 a 30 ff. 



' See app. crit. " Cf. H.A. 583 b 22 ff. 



459 



