Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/578

 myself whether the semen of the male could by any possibility make its way by attraction or injection to the seat of the conception ? And repeated examination led me to the con- clusion that none of the semen whatsoever reached this seat.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-EIGHTH.

Of what takes place in the month of October.

Repeated dissections performed in the course of the month of October, both before the rutting season was over and after it had passed, never enabled me to discover any blood or semen, or a trace of anything else, either in the body of the uterus or in its cornua. The uterus was only a little larger, and somewhat thicker; and the caruncles were more tumid and florid, and, when strongly pressed with the finger, dis- charged small drops of blood, much in the manner in which a little watery milk can be squeezed from the nipples of a woman in the fourth month of her pregnancy. In one or two does, indeed, I found a green and ichorous matter, like an abscess, filling the cavity of the uterus, which was preternatu- rally extenuated ; in other respects these animals were healthy, and in as good condition as others which I examined at the same time.

Towards the end of October and beginning of November, the rutting season being now ended, and the females separat- ing themselves from the males, the uterus begins (in some sooner, in others later) to shrink in size, and the walls of its internal cavity, inflated in appearance, to bulge out ; for where the cells existed formerly there are now certain globular masses projecting internally, which nearly fill the whole cavity, by which the sides are brought into mutual contact, and almost agglutinated, as it seems, so that there is no interval between them. Even as we have seen the lips of boys who, in robbing a hive, had been stung in the mouth, swollen and enlarged, so that the oral aperture was much contracted, even so does the in- ternal surface of the uterus in the doe enlarge, and become filled with a soft and pulpy substance, like the matter of the brain,