Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/574

 kinds of mice at the season of intercourse ; this circumstance corresponds with what we have already noticed in the cock, and the great change perceptible in the organs of generation of both sexes; nevertheless, the glands, which are regarded as the female testes, continue all the while unchanged and with- out departure from their pristine appearance.

All that has now been said of the uterus and its horns in hinds and does applies in major part to viviparous animals in general, but not to the human female, inasmuch as she con- ceives in the body of the uterus, but all these, with the excep- tion of the horse and ass, in the horns of the organ ; and even the horse and ass, although they appear to carry their fruit in the uterus, still is the place of the conception in them rather of the nature of an uterine horn than the uterine body. For the place here is not bipartite indeed, but it is oblong, and different from the human uterus both in its situation, con- nexions, structure, and substance; it bears a greater affinity to the superior uterus or uterine process. of the fowl, where the egg grows and becomes surrounded with the albumen, than to the uterus of the woman.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-SIXTH.

Of the intercourse of the hind and doe.

So much for the account of the uterus of the female deer, where we have spoken briefly upon all that seemed necessary to the history of generation, viz. the ' place' of conception, and the parts instituted for its sake. We have still to speak of the action and office of this ' place/ in other words, of inter- course and conception.

The hind and doe admit the male at one and only one particular season of the year, namely, in the middle of Sep- tember, after the Feast of the Holy Cross ; and they bring forth after the middle of June, about the Feast of St. John 'the Baptist (24th June). They, therefore, go with young about nine months, not eight, as Pliny says ; * with us, at all events,

1 Lib. viii, cap. 32.