uterus the fœtus is engendered. And it was on this account that Fabricius admitted two seats of generation: one internal, the uterus; another external, the ovum. But he would have had more reason, in my opinion, had he called the nest, or place where the eggs are laid, the external seat, that, to wit, in which the extruded seed or egg is cherished, matured, and perfected into a fœtus; for it is from the differences of this seat that the generation of oviparous animals is principally distinguished. And it is, indeed, a thing most worthy of admiration to see these creatures selecting and preparing their nests with so much foresight, and fashioning, and furnishing, and concealing them with such inimitable art and ingenuity; so that it seems imperative on us to admit in them a certain spark of the divine flame (as the poet said of bees); and, indeed, we can more readily admire than imitate their untaught art and sapience.
EXERCISE THE THIRD.
Of the upper part of the hen's uterus, or the ovary.
The uterus of the fowl is divided by Fabricius into the superior and inferior portions, and the superior portion he calls the ovary.
The ovary is situated immediately beneath the liver, close to the spine, over the descending aorta. In this situation, in the larger animals with red blood, the cœliac artery enters the mesentery, at the origin, namely, of the emulgent veins, or a little lower; in the situation moreover in which in the other red-blooded and viviparous animals the vasa præparantia, tending to the testes, take their origin: in the same place at which the testes of the cock -bird are situated, there is the ovary of the hen discovered. For some animals carry their testicles externally; others have them within the body, in the loins, in the space midway from the origins of the vasa præparantia. But the cock has his testicles at the very origin of these vessels, as if his spermatic fluid needed no preparation.
Aristotle[1] says that the ovum begins at the diaphragm; "I, however," says Fabricius, "in my treatise on Respiration, have
- ↑ Hist. Anim. lib. vi, c. 2.
