Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/387

 fervour quenched, do they take in their swelling sails, and, from late pugnacity, grow timid and desponding ! Even during the season of jocund masking in Venus's domains, male animals in general are depressed by intercourse, and become submissive and pusillanimous, as if reminded that in imparting life to others, they were contributing to their own destruction. The cock alone, replete with spirit and fecundity, still shows himself alert and gay; clapping his wings, and crowing triumphantly, he sings the nuptial song at each of his new espousals ! yet even he, after some length of time in Venus's service, begins to fail ; like the veteran soldier, he by and by craves discharge from active duty. And the hen, too, like the tree that is past bearing, becomes effete, and is finally exhausted.

EXERCISE THE TWENTY-NINTH.

Of the manner, according to Aristotle, in which a perfect and fruitful egg is produced by the male and female fowl.

Shortly before we said that a fruitful egg is not engendered spontaneously, that it is not produced save by a hen, and by her only through the concurrence of the cock. This agrees with the matter of the following sentence of Aristotle : x " The principles of generation have particular reference to male and female ; the male as supplying the original of motion and reproduction ; the female as furnishing the matter."

In our view, however, an egg is a true generative seed, ana- logous to the seed of a plant ; the original conception arising between the two parents, and being the mixed fruit or product of both. For as the egg is not formed without the hen, so is it not made fruitful without the concurrence of the cock.

We have therefore to inquire how the egg is produced by the hen and is fertilized by the cock; for we have seen that hypenemic eggs, and these animated too, are engendered by the hen, but that they are not prolific without the intercourse of the cock. The male and the female consequently, both set their mark

' De Gen. Anim. lib. i, cap. 2.