Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/311

 additional observations have since strengthened this conclusion, that I can scarcely keep from believing that some part at least of the shell is thus produced.

Nevertheless, I would say with Fabricius : " Let all reasoning be silent when experience gainsays its conclusions/' The too familiar vice of the present age is to obtrude as manifest truths, mere fancies, born of conjecture and superficial reasoning, alto- gether unsupported by the testimony of sense.

For I have very certainly discovered that the egg still con- tained in the uterus, in these countries at least, is covered with its shell ; although Aristotle and Pliny assert the contrary, and Fabricius thinks that " it is not to be too obstinately gainsaid." In warmer places, perhaps, and where the fowls are stronger, the eggs may be extruded soft, and for the most part without shells. With us this very rarely happens. When I was at Venice in former years, Aromatarius, a learned physician, showed me a small leaf which had grown between the two valves of a peas- cod, whilst with us there is nothing more apparent in these pods than a small point where the germ is about to be produced. So much do a milder climate, a brighter sky, and a softer air, conduce to increase and rapidity of growth.

EXERCISE THE TWELFTH.

Of the remaining parts of the egg.

We have already spoken partially of the place where, the time when, and the manner how the remaining parts of the egg are engendered, and we shall have something more to add when we come to speak of their several uses.

" The albumen," says Fabricius, 1 " is the ovi albus liquor of Pliny, the ovi candidum of Celsus, the ovi albor of Palladius, the ovi album et albumentum of Apicius, the XEI/KOI/ of the Greeks, the wow XEUKW^O of Aristotle, the opvSoq ya'Xa, or bird's milk of Anaxagoras. This is the cold, sluggish, white fluid of the egg, of different thickness at different places (thinner at the blunt and sharp ends, thicker in other situations,) and also in

1 Loc. cit. p. 22.