The treatises on Development are so full of detail that it is impossible to give an exact notion of their contents in a popular work. They contain however certain passages of personal and of general interest which must not be omitted.
Harvey shows the instinct of a naturalist in the following account of the cassowary which was not only new to him, but was unknown to Europe at the time he wrote. He says: “A certain bird, as large again as a swan, which the Dutch call a cassowary, was imported no long time ago from the island of Java in the East Indies into Holland. Ulysses Aldrovandus gives a figure of this bird and informs us that it is called an emu by the Indians. It is not a two-toed bird like the ostrich but has three toes on each foot, one of which is furnished with a spur of such length, strength, and hardness that the creature can easily kick through a board two fingers’ breadth in thickness. The cassowary defends itself by kicking forwards. In the body, legs, and thighs it resembles the ostrich: it has not a broad bill like the ostrich, however, but one that is rounded and black. On its head by way of crest it has an orbicular protuberant horn. It has no tongue and devours everything that is presented to it—stones, coals even though alight, pieces of glass—all without distinction. Its feathers sprout in pairs from each particular quill and are of a black colour, short and slender, and approaching to hair or down in their character. Its wings are very short and imperfect. The whole aspect of the creature is truculent, and it has numbers of red and blue wattles longitudinally disposed along the neck.
“This bird remained for more than seven years in Holland and was then sent among other presents by the illustrious Maurice Prince of Orange to his Serene Majesty, our King James, in whose gardens it continued to live for a period of upwards of five years.”
It has already been shown that Harvey was on a footing of something like intimacy with his master the King, whose artistic and scientific tastes are well known. This fact is again made clear by the following passages, in which Harvey followed his usual custom of showing to the King anything unusually curious. “I have seen a very small egg covered with a shell, contained within another larger egg, perfect in all respects and completely surrounded with a shell. An egg of this kind Fabricius calls an ovum centennium, and our housewives ascribe it to the cock. This egg I showed to his Serene Majesty King Charles, my most gracious master, in the presence of many persons. And the same year, in cutting up a large lemon, I found another perfect but very small lemon included within it, having a yellow rind like the other, and I hear that the same thing has frequently been seen in Italy.” Speaking in another place of these eggs, he says: “Some eggs too are larger, others smaller; a few extremely small. These in Italy are commonly called centennia, and our country folks still believe that such eggs are laid by the cock, and that were they set they would produce basilisks. ‘The vulgar,’ says Fabricius, ‘think that this small egg is the last that will be laid and that it comes as the hundredth in number, whence the name; that it has no yolk, though all the other parts are present—the chalazae, the albumen, the membranes, and the shell.’
“It was customary with his Serene Majesty, King Charles, after he had come to man’s estate, to take the diversion of hunting almost every week, both for the sake of finding relaxation from graver cares and for his health. The chase was principally the buck and doe, and no prince in the world had greater herds of deer, either wandering in freedom through the wilds and forests or kept in parks and chases for this purpose. The game, during the three summer months, was the buck then fat and in season; and in the autumn and winter for the same length of time the doe. This gave me an opportunity of dissecting numbers of these animals almost every day during the whole of the season.... I had occasion, so often as I desired it, to examine and study all the parts ... because the great prince, whose physician I was, besides taking much pleasure in such inquiries and not disdaining to bear witness to my discoveries, was pleased in his kindness and munificence to order me an abundant supply of these animals, and repeated opportunities of examining their bodies.” Speaking of the first rudiments of the heart, he says: “I have exhibited this point to his Serene Highness the King, still palpitating.... It was extremely minute indeed, and without the advantage of the sun’s light falling upon it from the side, its tremulous motions were not to be perceived.”
The late Sir George Paget published, in 1850, an autograph letter from Dr. Ward the learned divine and stout-hearted Royalist, who was master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, from 1609 to 1643. Both the letter and Harvey’s reply show the interest taken by King Charles in such scientific curiosities; but Harvey’s letter is also valuable because the peculiarities of its writing and annotation led to the discovery that the manuscript lectures in the British Museum [pp. 52-69] were in the handwriting of Harvey. It must, therefore, be looked upon as the origin of most of the recently acquired knowledge of the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, of his methods of observation, of his reading, and of his system of arrangement, and of verbal exposition.
Dr. Ward’s letter is as follows:—
“Sir,—I received your letter by which I understand his Majesty’s pleasure that I should send up the petrified skull, which we have in our College Library, which accordingly I have done, with the case wherein we keep it. And I send in this letter both the key of the case and a note which we have recorded of the Donor and whence he had it. And so with my affectionate prayers and best devotions for the long life of his sacred Majesty and my service to yourself I rest
“At Your Command,
“Samuel Ward.
“Sidney College, June 10, Sunday.”