duced from ova. Passing by almost all insects and the whole of the less perfect animals, which are obviously produced from eggs, the greater number of the more perfect are also engendered from eggs." And then he goes on to particularize: "All feathered creatures; fishes likewise, with the single exception of the whale tribes; crustacea, testacea, and all mollusca; among land animals, reptiles, millepeds, and all creeping things; and among quadrupeds, the entire tribe of lizards."
We, however, maintain (and shall take care to show that it is so), that all animals whatsoever, even the viviparous, and man himself not excepted, are produced from ova; that the first conception, from which the fœtus proceeds in all, is an ovum of one description or another, as well as the seeds of all kinds of plants. Empedocles,[1] therefore, spoke not improperly of the oviparum genus arboreum, "the egg-bearing race of trees." The history of the egg is therefore of the widest scope, inasmuch as it illustrates generation of every description.
We shall, therefore, begin by showing where, whence, and how eggs are produced; and then inquire by what means and order and successive steps the fœtus or chick is formed and perfected in and from the egg.
Fabricius has these additional words: "The fœtus of animals is engendered in one case from an ovum, in another from the seminal fluid, in a third from putrefaction; whence some creatures are oviparous, others viviparous, and yet others, born of putrefaction or by the spontaneous act of nature, automatically."
Such a division as this, however, does not satisfy me, inasmuch as all animals whatsoever may be said in a certain sense to spring from ova, and in another certain sense from seminal fluid; and they are entitled oviparous, viviparous, or vermiparous, rather in respect of their mode of bringing forth than of their first formation. Even the creatures that arise spontaneously are called automatic, not because they spring from putrefaction, but because they have their origin from accident, the spontaneous act of nature, and are equivocally engendered, as it is said, proceeding from parents unlike themselves. And, then, certain other animals bring forth an egg or a worm as their conception and semen, from which, after it has been exposed
- ↑ Arist. De Gen. Anim. lib. i, cap. 20.
