Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/322

 mothers are wont to treat their infants when they are restless and cry in their cradles.

Hens lay eggs in variable numbers : " Some hens/' says the philosopher/ "except the two winter months, lay through the whole year; some of the better breeds will lay as many as sixty eggs before they show a disposition to sit; though these eggs are not so prolific as those of the commoner kinds. The Adrianic hens are small, and lay every day, but they are ill- tempered, and often kill their young ones; they are particoloured in their plumage. Some domestic fowls will even lay twice a day; and some, by reason of their great fecundity, die young."

In England some of the hens lay every day; but the more prolific commonly lay two days continuously and then miss a day : the first day the egg is laid in the morning, next day in the afternoon, and the third day there is a pause. Some hens have a habit of breaking their eggs and deserting their nests ; whether this be from disease or vice is not known.

Certain differences may also be observed in the incubation : some fowls only sit once, others twice, or thrice, or repeatedly. Florentius says, that in Alexandria, in Egypt, there are fowls called monosires, from which the fighting cocks are descended, which go on sitting for two or three periods, each successive brood being removed as it is hatched, and brought up apart. In this way the same hen will hatch forty, sixty, and even a greater number of chickens, at a single sitting.

Some eggs too, are larger, others smaller ; a few extremely small; these, in Italy, are commonly called centenina; and our country folks still believe that such eggs are laid by the cock, and that were they set they would produce basilisks. " The vulgar," says Fabricius, 2 " think that this small egg is the last that will be laid, and that it comes as the hundredth in number, whence the name ; that it has no yelk, though all the other parts are present the chalazse, the albumen, the membranes, and the shell. And it seems probable that it is produced when all the other yelks have been fashioned into eggs, and no more remain in the vitellary ; on the other hand, however, a modicum of albumen remains, and out of this, it may be inferred, is the small egg in question produced." To

1 Hist. Anim. lib. vi, cap. 1. a Op. cit. p. 10.