Our modern anatomists and physicians are of different sentiments from the ancients touching the woman's contributing seed for the formation of the child, as well as the man; the ancients strongly affirming it, but our modern authors being generally of another judgment. I will not make myself a party to this controversy, but set down impartially, yet briefly, the arguments on each side, and leave the judicious reader to judge for himself. Though it is apparent, say the ancients, that the seed of man is the principal efficient and beginning of action, motion and generation, yet the woman affords seed, and contributes to the procreation of the child, it is evident from hence, that the woman had seminal vessels, which had been given her in vain if she wanted seminal excretions; but since nature forms nothing in vain, it must be granted that they were formed for the use of the seed and procreation, and fixed in their proper places, to operate and contribute virtue and efficiency to the seed; and this, say they, is further proved from hence, that if women at years of maturity use not copulation to eject their seed, they often fall into strange diseases, as appears by young women and virgins, and also it appears that, women are never better pleased than when they are often satisfied this way, which argues, that the pleasure and delight, say they, is double in women to what it is in men, for as the delight of men in copulation consists chiefly in the emission of the seed, so women are delighted, both in the emission of their own and the reception of the man's. But against this, all our modern authors affirm that the ancients are very erroneous, inasmuch as the testicles in women do not afford seed, but are two eggs, like those of a fowl or other creatures; neither have they any such offices as in men, but are indeed an ovarium, or receptacle for eggs, wherein these eggs are nourished, by the sanguinary vessels dispersed through them; and from hence one or more, as they are fecundated by the man's seed, are conveyed into the womb by the oviducts. And the truth of this, say they, is so plain, that if you boil them, the liquor shall have the same taste, colour and consistency with the taste of bird's eggs. And if it be objected that they have no shells, the answer is easy; for the eggs of fowls while they are in the ovary, nay, after they have fallen into the uterus, have no shell: and though they have one when they are laid, yet it is no more than a fence which nature has provided for them against outward injuries, they being hatched without the body, but those of women being hatched within the body have no need of any other fence than the womb to secure them.