In _De Generatione_, Harvey provides a thorough and quite accurate account of the development of the chick embryo, which, in particular, clarified that the chalazae, those twisted skeins of albumen at either end of the yolk, were not, as generally believed, the developing embryo, and he demonstrated that the cicatricula (blastoderm) was the point of origin of the embryo. The famous frontispiece of the treatise shows Zeus holding an egg, from which issue animals of various kinds. On the egg is written _Ex ovo omnia_, a legend since transmuted to the epigram _Omne vivum ex ovo_. The legend illustrates Harvey's principal theme, repeated constantly throughout the text, "that all animals were in some sort produced from eggs."[20] If Harvey made no contribution beyond emphasizing the origin of animals from eggs, he would deserve a prominent place in the history of embryology. But the work is also significant in its espousal of epigenesis, and, supported as his argument was by observation and logic, it became the prime formulation of that concept of development during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His statement of epigenetic development is clear: In the egg ... there is no distinct part or prepared matter present, from which the fetus is formed ... an animal which is created by epigenesis attracts, prepares, elaborates, and makes use of the material, all at the same time; the processes of formation and growth are simultaneous ... all its parts are not fashioned simultaneously, but emerge in their due succession and order ... Those parts, I say, are not made similar by any successive union of dissimilar and heterogeneous elements, but spring out of a similar material through the process of generation, have their different elements assigned to them by the same process, and are made dissimilar ... all its parts are formed, nourished, and augmented out of the same material.[21] Actually, Harvey's exposition of epigenesis, albeit clear, is not totally impressive, since it is largely a reflection of Aristotle's influence. The main importance of Harvey's vigorous and cogent defense of epigenesis is that it provided some kind of counterbalance to the increasingly dominant preformationist interpretations of embryonic development. Harvey did not break with Aristotelianism; on the contrary, he lent considerable authority to it. Unable to escape the past, he was not completely objective in his study of generation. Everywhere the pages of his book reveal his indebtedness to past authorities. Robert Willis, who provided the 1847 translation of _De Generatione_, expresses this well: