Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/317

 mained, in order that I might better distinguish the position of the chick : I found it lying, as it were, within a mould of the albumen, and the yelk possessed the same agreeable flavour and sweetness as that of the new-laid egg, boiled to the same degree of hardness. The yelk taken from the ovarium of a live fowl, and eaten immediately, tastes much sweeter raw than boiled.

Eggs also differ from one another in shape ; some are longer and more pointed, others rounder and blunter. According to Aristotle, 1 the long-shaped and pointed eggs produce females ; the blunt, on the contrary, yield males. Pliny, 2 however, maintains the opposite. " The rounder eggs," he says, " pro- duce females, the others males;" and with him Columella 3 agrees : " He who desires to have the greater number of his brood cocks, let him select the longest and sharpest eggs for incubation; and on the contrary, when he would have the greater number females, let him choose the roundest eggs/' The ground of Aristotle's opinion was this : because the rounder eggs are the hotter, and it is the property of heat to concentrate and determine, and that heat can do most which is most powerful. From the stronger and more perfect principle, there- fore, proceeds the stronger and more perfect animal. Such is the male compared with the female, especially in the case of the common fowl. On the contrary, again, the smaller eggs are reckoned among the imperfect ones, and the smallest of all are regarded as entirely unproductive. It was on this account too that Aristotle, to secure the highest quality of eggs, recom- mends that the hens be frequently trodden. Barren and ad- ventitious eggs, he asserts, are smaller and less savoury, because they are humid and imperfect. The differences indicated are to be understood as referring to the eggs of the same fowl; for when a certain hen goes on laying eggs of a certain character, they will all produce either males or females. If you understand this point otherwise, the guess as to males or females, from the indications given, would be extremely uncertain. Because dif- ferent hens lay eggs that differ much in respect of size and figure : some habitually lay more oblong, others, rounder eggs, that do

1 Hist. Anim. lib. vi, cap. 2. 2 Lib. x, cap. 52 ; lib. ix.

3 De Re Rust. cap. 5, Scalig. in loc.