Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/305

 now be given more particularly, and we shall begin from without and proceed inwards.

" The external covering of the egg, called by Pliny the cortex and putamen, by Quintus Serenus the testa ovi, is a hard but thin, friable and porous covering, of different colours in different cases white, light green, speckled, &c. All eggs are not fur- nished with a shell on their extrusion: the eggs of serpents have none; and some fowls occasionally, though rarely, lay eggs that are without shells. The shell, though everywhere hard, is not of uniform hardness; it is hardest towards the upper end." From this Fabriciusi opines that we are to doubt as to the matter of which, and the season at which the shells of eggs are produced. Aristotle 2 and Pliny 3 affirm that the shell is not formed within the body of the fowl, but when the egg is laid ; and that as it issues it sets by coming in contact with the air, the internal heat driving off moisture. And this, says Aristotle, 4 is so arranged to spare the animal pain, and to render the pro- cess of parturition more easy. An egg softened in vinegar is said to be easily pushed into a vessel with a narrow mouth.

Fabricius was long indisposed to this opinion, " because he had found an egg within the body of the fowl covered with a hard shell; and housewives are in the daily practice of trying the bellies of their hens with their fingers in order that they may know by the hardness whether the creatures are likely to lay that day or not." But by-and-by, when " he had been assured by women worthy of confidence, that the shells of eggs became hardened in their passage into the air, which dissipates a cer- tain moisture diffused over the egg on its exit, fixing it in the shell not yet completely hardened;" and having afterwards " confirmed this by his own experience," he altered his opinion, and came to the conclusion, " that the egg surrounded with a shell, and having a consistency betwixt hard and soft, hardened notably at the moment of its extrusion, in consequence, ac- cording to Aristotle's views, of the concretion and dissipation of the thinner part of a certain viscid and tenacious humour, bedewed with which the egg is extruded; sticking to the recent shell this humour is dried up and hardened, the cold of the

1 Loc. cit. p. 13. a Hist. Anim. lib. vi, c. 2, et de Gen. Anim. lib. i,-c. 8.

3 Hist. Anim. lib. x, c. 52. 4 De Gener. Anim. lib. iii, c. 2.