Buffon's Natural History, Volume 03 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c.Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
History
Buffon's Natural History, Volume 03 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c.
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
Natural history
These observations of Malpighius shew that the testicles of females
are not real ovaries, as most anatomists believe; that the vesicles
they contain are not eggs; that these vesicles never fall into the
matrix; and that the testicles, like those of the male, are kinds
of reservoirs, containing a liquor which must be looked upon as an
imperfect seed of the female, that is perfected in the yellow glandular
body which fills the internal cavity, and is shed when the glandular
substance has acquired its full maturity. But before we decide on this
important point, we must relate the observations of Valisnieri; and we
shall perceive that, though Malpighius and Valisnieri have made good
observations, they have not carried them far enough, nor drawn those
consequences from them which their observations might naturally have
produced, because they were both prejudiced for the system of eggs, and
of the foetus pre-existing therein.
Valisnieri began his experiments in 1692, on the testicles of a sow,
whose testicles are not composed like those of a cow, sheep, mare,
bitch, female ass, she goat, nor most other viviparous females, for
they resemble a small bunch of grapes, whose seeds are round and
prominent outwardly. Between these seeds there are smaller, which have
not arrived to maturity. These seeds do not appear to be surrounded
with one common membrane; they are, he says, similar to those yellow
substances which Malpighius observed in cows; they are round, of a
reddish colour, their surface sprinkled over with sanguinary vessels
like the eggs of viviparous animals, and together form a mass larger
than the ovary; we may, with a little address, and by dividing the
membrane, separate these grains one by one, and draw them from the
ovary, where they each leave an impression.
These glandular substances are not of the same colour in every sow, in
some they are red, in others more clear; and they are of all sizes,
from the most minute point to that of a grape. On opening them we find
a triangular cavity filled with a limpid liquor, which coagulates
by the fire, and becomes white like that contained in the vesicles.
Valisnieri hoped to meet with the egg in one of those cavities, but
although he sought for it with the utmost assiduity in the glandular
substance of the ovaries of four different sows, and afterwards in
those of other animals, yet he could never discover the egg which
Malpighius asserts to have met with once or twice.
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