Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/395

 efficient cause of generation than the female, but some mixture of the two; and that neither the menstrual blood nor its purest part is the prime matter of the conception, but the spermatic fluid; whence the first particles or their rudiments are spoken of as spermatic, these at an after period being nourished and made to increase through the blood.

But it is obvious that neither is the egg engendered by the cock and hen in this way; for the hen in the act of intercourse emits no semen from which an egg might be formed ; nor can aught like a seminal fluid of the hen be demonstrated at any time ; and indeed the animal is destitute of the organs essential to its preparation, the testes and vasa spermatica. And though the hen have an effective force in common with the cock (as must be manifest from what precedes), and it is a mixture of some sort that renders an egg fruitful, still this does not happen according to the predominance of the genitures, or the manner of their mixture, for it is certain, and Fabricius admits it, that the semen of the cock does not reach the cavity of the uterus ; neither is there any trace of the egg to be discovered in the uterus immediately after intercourse, and as its consequence, although Aristotle himself repeatedly avers that there is, as- serting that " something of the conception forthwith ensues." But I shall by and by demonstrate that neither does any such imaginary mixture of seminal fluids take place in any animal, nor that immediately upon intercourse, even of a fruitful kind, is there anything in the shape of semen or blood, or of the rudiments of an embryo present or demonstrable in the cavity of the uterus. Nothing is found in the egg or embryo which leads us to suppose that the semen masculiuum is either there contained or mingled. The vulgar notion of the chalazse being the tread of the cock is a sheer mistake ; and I am surprised, since there are two of them, one in either end of the egg, that no one has yet been found to maintain that this was the cock's seed, that the hen's. But this popular error is at once answered by the fact that the chalazae are present with the same characters in every egg, whether it be fertile or barren.