Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/291

 course, fruitful eggs are deposited, the rudiments or matter of which did not exist at the time of the communication.

With a view to explaining how the spermatic fluid of the cock renders eggs fecund, Fabricius says : l " Since the semen does not appear in the egg, and yet is thrown into the uterus by the cock, it may be asked why this is done if the fluid does not enter the egg ? Farther : if not present in the egg, how is that egg made fruitful by the spermatic fluid of the cock which it yet does not contain ? My opinion is that the semen of the cock thrown into the commencement of the uterus, produces an in- fluence on the whole of the uterus, and at the same time ren- ders fruitful the whole of the yelks, and finally of the perfect eggs which fall into it ; and this the semen effects by its peculiar property or irradiative spirituous substance, in the same manner as we see other animals rendered fruitful by the testicles and semen. For if any one will but bring to mind the incredible change that is produced by castration, when the heat, strength, and fecundity are lost, he will readily admit that what we have proposed may happen in reference to the single uterus of a fowl. But that it is in all respects true, and that the faculty of impregnating the whole of the ova, and also the uterus itself, proceeds from the semen of the cock, appears from the custom of those housewives who keep hens at home but no cock, that they commit their hens for a day or two to a neighbour's cock, and in this short space of time the whole of the eggs that will be laid for a certain season are rendered prolific. And this fact is confirmed by Aristotle, 2 who will have it that, among birds, one intercourse suffices to render almost all the eggs fruitful. For the fecundating influence of the seminal fluid, as it cannot exhale, so is it long retained in the uterus, to which it imparts the whole of its virtue ; nature herself stores it up, placing it in a cavity appended to the uterus, near the fundament, furnished with an entrance only, so that, being there laid up, its virtue is the better preserved and communicated to the entire uterus."

I, however, suspected the truth of the above views, all the more when I saw that the words of the philosopher referred to were not accurately quoted. Aristotle does not say that

1 Op. cit. i>. 37. 2 De Gen. Anim. lib. iii, c. 1.