EXERCISE THE TWENTIETH.
The sixth inspection.
Everything is still more distinct upon the seventh day, and the rudiments of several of the particular parts are now conspicuous, viz., the wings, legs, genital organs, divisions for the toes, thighs, ilia, &c. The embryo now moves and kicks, and the form of the perfect chick is recognizable; from this time forward, indeed, nothing is superadded; the very delicate parts only increase in size. The more the parts grow the more is the albumen consumed, and the external membranes united come to be of the nature of the secundines, and ever more and more closely represent the umbilical cord. Wherefore I conceive that, from the seventh, we may at once pass on to the tenth day, nothing of any moment occurring in this interval which is not particularly noted by other writers, especially by Aristotle.
It happens, nevertheless, that when a number of eggs are examined together, some are found more precocious and forward, having everything more distinct; others, again, are more sluggish, and these have the parts less apparent. The season of the year, the place where the incubation is carried on, the sedulousness with which it is performed, and other accidents, have undoubtedly great influence on this diversity of result. I remember on one occasion, on the seventh day to have seen the cavity in the blunt end enlarged in a sluggish egg, the colliquament covered with veins, the vermicular embryo in its middle, the rudiments of the eyes, and all the rest as it is met with in the generality of eggs on the fifth day; but the pulsatory vesicles were not yet apparent, nor was the trunk or root of the veins from which we have said that they originate, yet to be discovered. I therefore regarded this egg as of a feeble nature and left behind, as possessed of an inadequate reproductive faculty, and near to its death; all the more when I observed its colliquament less pellucid and refractive than usual, and the vessels not of such a bright red colour as wont. When the vital spirit is about to escape, that part which is first influenced in generation and earliest attracts attention is also the first that fails and disappears.
EXERCISE THE TWENTY-FIRST.
The inspection after the tenth day.
All that presents itself on the tenth day is so accurately described by Aristotle that scarcely anything remains for us to add. Now his opinion, according to my interpretation of it, is this, viz., that “on the tenth day the entire chick is conspicuous,”[190] being pellucid and white in every part except the eyes and the venous ramifications. “The head at this time is larger than the whole of the rest of the body; and eyes larger than the head are connected with it,” (adhering, and being in some sort appended to the head,) “but having as yet no pupils,” (perfectly formed pupils must here be understood, for it is not difficult to make out the distinct tunics of the eye at this epoch;) “the eyes, if removed at this time, will be found as large as beans and black, and if they be incised, a clear humour flows out, cold, and refracting the light powerfully, but nothing else,” i. e., in the whole head there is nothing but the limpid water which has been mentioned. Such is the state of matters from the seventh to the tenth day, as we have said above. “At the same time,” he continues, “the viscera also appear, and all that appertains to the abdomen and intestines,” viz., the substance of the heart, the lungs, liver, &c., all of a white colour, mucilaginous, pulpy, without any kind of consistency. “The veins, too, that issue from the heart are already in connexion with the umbilicus, from which one vein extends to the membrane that includes the vitellus, which has now become more liquid and diffluent than it was originally; another to the membrane which surrounds everything,” (i. e., the tunica colliquamenti,) “and embraces the fœtus, the vitellus and the interjacent fluid. For the embryo increasing somewhat, one portion of the vitellus is superior, another inferior; but the albumen in the middle is liquid, and still extends under the inferior portion of the vitellus, as it did previously.” Thus far Aristotle.
And now the arteries are seen distinctly accompanying the veins, both those that proceed to the albumen and those that are distributed to the vitellus. The vitellus also at this time liquefies still more and becomes more diffluent, not entirely, indeed, but, as already said, that portion of it which is uppermost; neither do the branches of the veins proceed to every part of the vitellus alike, but only to that part which we have spoken of as resembling melted wax. The veins that are distributed to the albumen have, in like manner, arteries accompanying them. The larger portion of the albumen now dissolves into a clear fluid, the colliquament, which surrounds the embryo that swims in its middle, and comes between the two portions of the vitellus, viz., the superior and the inferior; underneath all (in the sharp end of the egg), the thicker and more viscid portion of the albumen is contained. The superior portion of the yelk already appears more liquid and diffluent than the inferior; and wherever the branches of the veins extend, there the matter seems suddenly to swell and become more diffluent.
“On the tenth day,” continues our author, “the albumen subsides, having now become a small tenacious, viscid, and yellowish mass”—so much of it, that is to say, as has not passed into the state of colliquament.
For already the larger portion of the white has become dissolved, and has even passed into the body of the embryo, viz., the whole of the thinner albumen, and the greater portion of the thicker. The yelk, on the contrary, rather looks larger than it did in the beginning. Whence it clearly appears that the yelk has not as yet served for the nutrition of the embryo, but is reserved to perform this office by and by. In so far as we can conjecture from the course and distribution of the veins, the embryo from the commencement is nourished by the colliquament; upon this blood-vessels are first distributed, and then they spread over the membrane of the thinner albumen, next over the thicker albumen, and finally over the vitellus. The thicker albumen serves for nutriment after the thinner; the vitellus is drawn upon last of all.