Of such ovaries of the mullet and carp, salted and pressed, and dried in the smoke, was prepared that article of food in such request among the Greeks and old Italians, (called botorcha by the latter, ώά τάριχα, i. e. salted eggs, by the former,) and very similar, we may presume, to the masses which we find in the insides of our smoked herrings, and to the compact granular red-coloured roe of our lobsters. The article prepared from the salted roe of the sturgeon, which is called caviare, and resembles black soap, is still the delight of epicures. In those fishes that are highly prolific such a quantity of eggs is engendered, that the whole abdomen can scarcely contain them, even when they are first produced, still less when they have grown to any size. In fishes, therefore, there is no part save the ovary dedicated to purposes of reproduction. The ova of these animals continue to grow without the body, and do not require the protection of an uterus for their evolution. And the ovary here appears to bear an analogy to the testicles or vesiculæ seminales, not only because it is found in the same place as the testes in the male, (the testes in the cock being situated, as we have said, close to the origin of the cœliac artery, near the waist, in the very same place as the ovary in the hen,) but because among fishes, in both sexes, as the time of spawning approaches, two follicles, alike in situation, size, and shape, are discovered, extending the whole length of the abdomen; which increase and become distended at the same period: in the male with a homogeneous milky spermatic matter, (whence the term milk or milt of fishes;) in the female with innumerable granules, which, from their diminutive size and close texture, in the beginning of the season, escape the powers of vision, and present themselves as constituting an uniform body, bearing the strongest resemblance to the milt of the male regularly coagulated. By and by they are seen in the guise of minute grains of sand, adhering together within their follicles. In the smaller birds that lay but once a year, and a few eggs only, you will scarcely discover any ovary. Still, in the place where the testicles are situated in the male, there in the female, and not less obviously than the testicles of the male, you will perceive three or four vesicles (the number being in proportion to that of the eggs of which they are the rudiments), by way of ovary. In the cornua of the uterus of snakes (which resemble the vasa deferentia in male animals), the first rudiments of the ova present themselves as globules strung upon a thread, in the same way as women’s bracelets, or like a rosary composed of amber beads.