EXERCISE THE THIRTY-NINTH.
Of the cock and the particulars most remarkable in his constitution.
The cock, as stated, is the prime efficient of the perfect or fruitful hen’s egg, and the chief cause of generation: without the male no chick would ever be produced from an egg, and in many ovipara not even would any egg be produced. It is, therefore, imperative on us that we look narrowly into his offices and uses, and inquire particularly what he contributes to the egg and chick, both in the act of intercourse and at other times.
It is certain that the cock in coition emits his ‘geniture,’ commonly called semen, from his sexual parts, although he has no penis, as I maintain; because his testes and long and ample vasa deferentia are full of this fluid. But whether it issues in jets, with a kind of spirituous briskness and repeatedly as in the hotter viviparous animals, or not, I have not been able to ascertain. But as I do not find any vesiculæ containing semen, from which, made brisk and raised into a froth by the spirits, it might be emitted; nor any penis through whose narrower orifice it might be forcibly ejaculated, and so strike upon the interior of the hen; and particularly when I see the act of intercourse so rapidly performed between them; I am disposed to believe that the parts of the hen are merely moistened with a very small quantity of seminal fluid, only as much as will adhere to the orifice of the pudenda, and that the prolific fluid is not emitted by any sudden ejaculation; so that whilst among animals repeated ejaculations take place during the same connection, among birds, which are not delayed with any complexity of venereal apparatus, the same object is effected by repeated connections. Animals that are long in connection, copulate rarely; and this is the case with the swan and ostrich among birds. The cock, therefore, as he cannot stay long in his connections, supplies by dint of repeated treadings the reiterated ejaculations of the single intercourse in other animals; and as he has neither penis nor glans, still the extremities of the vasa deferentia, inflated with spirits when he treads, become turgid in the manner of a glans penis, and the orifice of the uterus of the hen, compressed by them, her cloaca being exposed for the occasion, is anointed with genital fluid, which consequently does not require a penis for its intromission.
We have said, however, that such was the virtue of the semen of the cock, that not only did it render the uterus, the egg in utero, and the vitelline germ in the ovary, but the whole hen prolific, so that even the germs of vitelli, yet to be produced, were impregnated.
Fabricius has well observed, that the quantity of spermatic fluid contained in the testes and vasa deferentia of the cock was large; not that the hen requires much to fecundate each of her eggs, but that the cock may have a supply for the large number of hens he serves and for his repeated addresses to them.
The shortness and straight course of the spermatic vessels in the cock also assist the rapid emission of the spermatic fluid: anything that must pass through lengthened and tortuous conduits of course escapes more slowly and requires a greater exercise of the impelling power or spirit to force it away.
Among male animals there is none that is more active or more haughty and erect, or that has stronger powers of digestion than the cock, which turns the larger portion of his food into semen; hence it is that he requires so many wives,—ten or even a dozen. For there are some animals, single males of which suffice for several females, as we see among deer, cattle, &c.; and there are others, of which the females are so prurient that they are scarcely satisfied with several males, such as the bitch and the wolf; whence prostitutes were called lupæ or wolves, as making their persons common; and stews were entitled lupanaria. Whilst some animals, of a more chaste disposition, live, as it were, in the conjugal estate, so that the male is married to a single female only, and both take part in providing for the wants of the family; for since nature requires that the male supply the deficiencies of the female in the work of generation, and as she alone in many cases does not suffice to cherish and feed and protect the young, the male is added to the wife that he may take part in the burthen of bringing up the offspring. Partridges lead a wedded life, because the females alone cannot incubate such a number of eggs as they lay, (so that they are said, by some, to make two nests,) nor to bring up such a family as by and by appears without assistance. The male pigeon also assists in building the nest, takes his turn in incubating the eggs, and is active in feeding the young. In the same way many other instances of conjugal life among the lower animals might be quoted, and indeed we shall have occasion to refer to several in what yet remains to be said.
Those males, among animals, which serve several females, such as the cock, have an abundant secretion of seminal fluid, and are provided with long and ample vasa deferentia. And at whatever time or season the clustered rudimentary papulæ in the ovary come to maturity and require fecundation, that they may go on to be turned into perfect eggs, the males will then be found to have an abundance of seminal fluid, and the testicles to enlarge and become conspicuous in the very situation to which they transfer their fecundating influence, viz. the præcordia. This is remarkable in fishes, birds, and the whole race of oviparous animals; the males of which teem with fecundating seminal fluid at the same precise seasons as the females become full of eggs.
Whatever parts of the hen, therefore, are destined by nature for purposes of generation, viz. the ovary, the infundibulum, the processus uteri, the uterus itself, and the pudenda; as also the situation of these parts, their structure, dimensions, temperature, and all that follows this; all these, I say, are either subordinate to the production and growth of the egg, or to intercourse and the reception of fecundity from the male; or, for the sake of parturition, to which they conduce either as principal and convenient means, or as means necessary, and without which what is done could not be accomplished; for nothing in nature’s works is fashioned either carelessly or in vain. In the same way all the parts in the cock are fashioned subordinate to the preparation or concoction of the spermatic fluid, and its transference to the hen.
Now those males that are so vigorously constituted as to serve several females are larger and handsomer, and in the matter of spirit and arms excel their females in a far greater degree than the males of those that live attached to a single female. Neither the male partridge, nor the crow, nor the pigeon, is distinguished from the female bird in the same decided way as the cock from his hens, the stag from his does, &c.
The cock, therefore, as he is gayer in his plumage, better armed, more courageous and pugnacious, so is he replete with semen, and so apt for repeated intercourse, that unless he have a number of wives he distresses them by his frequent assaults; he not only invites but compels them to his pleasure, and leaping upon them at inconvenient and improper seasons, (even when they are engaged in the business of incubation) and wearing off the feathers from their backs, he truly does them an injury. I have occasionally seen hens so torn and worn by the ferocious addresses of the cock, that with their backs stript of feathers and laid bare in places, even to the bone, they languished miserably for a time and then died. The same thing also occurs among pheasants, turkeys, and other species.