Anatomists have taken the word _egg_ in several acceptations and meanings. When Harvey took for his motto, _Omnia ex ovo_, he understood by the word egg, as applied to viviparous animals, the membrane which includes the foetus and all its appendages: he thought, he perceived this egg, or membrane, form immediately after the copulation of the male and the female. But this egg does not proceed from the ovium of the female; and he has even maintained, that he did not remark the least alteration in this testicle, &c. We perceive there is here nothing like what is commonly understood by the word egg unless the figure of the bag may be supposed to have some resemblance thereto. Harvey, who dissected so many viviparous females, did not, he says, ever perceive any alteration in the ovaria; he looked on them even as small glands, perfectly useless to general ion,[Y] although they undergo very remarkable changes and alterations in them, since we may perceive in cows the glandular bodies grow from the size of a millet seed to that of a cherry. This great anatomist was led into this error by the smallness of the glandular bodies in the species of deer, to which he principally paid his attention. C. Peyerus, who also made many experiments on them, says, "Exigui quidem sunt damarum testiculi, sed post coitum foecundum, in alterutro eorum, papilla, sive tuberculum fibrosum, semper succrescit; scrofis autem prægnantibus tanta accidit testiculorum mutatio, ut mediocrem quoque attentionem fugere nequeat."[Z] This author imagines, with some reason, that the minuteness of the testicles of does, is the cause of Harvey's not having remarked the alterations; but he is wrong in advancing that the alterations he had remarked, and which had escaped Harvey's notice, did not happen till after impregnation. [Y] See Harvey Exercit. 64 and 65. [Z] Vide Conradi Peyeri Merycologia. It appears that Harvey was deceived in many other essential points; he asserts, that the seed of the male does not enter into the matrix of the female, and even that it cannot; yet Verheyen found a great quantity of the male seed in the matrix of a cow, which he dissected six hours after copulation.[AA] The celebrated Ruysch asserts, that having dissected a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, and was assassinated, he found, not only in the cavity of the matrix, but also in the trunks, a quantity of the seminal liquor of the male,[AB] Valisnieri affirms, that Fallopius and other anatomists had also discovered male seed in the matrix of many women. After the positive testimony of these great anatomists, there can remain no doubt but Harvey was deceived in this important point; especially when to these are added that of Leeuwenhoek, who found the male seed in the matrix of a great number of females of different species. [AA] See Verheyen Sup. Anat. Tra. v. cap. iii. [AB] See Ruysch, Thes. Anat. p. 90, tab. VI, fig. I.