Aristotle, Second Part of THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

II: 128 pages - You are on Page 45

The sperm of birds, as of animals in general, is white. After the female has submitted to the male, she draws up the sperm to underneath her midriff. At first it is little in size and white in colour; by and by it is red, the colour of blood; as it grows, it becomes pale and yellow all over. When at length it is getting ripe for hatching, it is subject to differentiation of substance, and the yolk gathers together within and the white settles round it on the outside. When the full time is come, the egg detaches itself and protrudes, changing from soft to hard with such temporal exactitude that, whereas it is not hard during the process of protrusion, it hardens immediately after the process is completed: that is if there be no concomitant pathological circumstances. Cases have occurred where substances resembling the egg at a critical point of its growth-that is, when it is yellow all over, as the yolk is subsequently-have been found in the cock when cut open, underneath his midriff, just where the hen has her eggs; and these are entirely yellow in appearance and of the same size as ordinary eggs. Such phenomena are regarded as unnatural and portentous.

Such as affirm that wind-eggs are the residua of eggs previously begotten from copulation are mistaken in this assertion, for we have cases well authenticated where chickens of the common hen and goose have laid wind-eggs without ever having been subjected to copulation. Wind-eggs are smaller, less palatable, and more liquid than true eggs, and are produced in greater numbers. When they are put under the mother bird, the liquid contents never coagulate, but both the yellow and the white remain as they were. Wind-eggs are laid by a number of birds: as for instance by the common hen, the hen partridge, the hen pigeon, the peahen, the goose, and the vulpanser. Eggs are hatched under brooding hens more rapidly in summer than in winter; that is to say, hens hatch in eighteen days in summer, but occasionally in winter take as many as twenty-five. And by the way for brooding purposes some birds make better mothers than others. If it thunders while a hen-bird is brooding, the eggs get addled. Wind-eggs that are called by some cynosura and uria are produced chiefly in summer. Wind-eggs are called by some zephyr-eggs, because at spring-time hen-birds are observed to inhale the breezes; they do the same if they be stroked in a peculiar way by hand. Wind-eggs can turn into fertile eggs, and eggs due to previous copulation can change breed, if before the change of the yellow to the white the hen that contains wind-eggs, or eggs begotten of copulation be trodden by another cock-bird. Under these circumstances the wind-eggs turn into fertile eggs, and the previously impregnated eggs follow the breed of the impregnator; but if the latter impregnation takes place during the change of the yellow to the white, then no change in the egg takes place: the wind-egg does not become a true egg, and the true egg does not take on the breed of the latter impregnator. If when the egg-substance is small copulation be intermitted, the previously existing egg-substance exhibits no increase; but if the hen be again submitted to the male the increase in size proceeds with rapidity.

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