... for the
male contributes to this.
Wind-eggs, then, participate in generation so far as is possible for
them. That they should be perfected into an animal is impossible,
for an animal requires sense-perception; but the nutritive faculty
of the soul is possessed by females as well as males, and indeed by
all living things, as has been often said, wherefore the egg itself is
perfect only as the embryo of a plant, but imperfect as that of an
animal. If, then, there had been no male sex in the class of birds,
the egg would have been produced as it is in some fishes, if indeed
there is any kind of fish of such a nature as to generate without a
male; but it has been said of them before that this has not yet been
satisfactorily observed. But as it is both sexes exist in all birds,
so that, considered as a plant, the egg is perfect, but in so far as
it is not a plant it is not perfect, nor does anything else result
from it; for neither has it come into being simply like a real plant
nor from copulation like an animal. Eggs, however, produced from
copulation but already separated into white and yolk take after the
first cock; for they already contain both principles, which is why
they do not change again after the second impregnation.
8
The young are produced in the same way also by the cephalopoda, e.g.
sepias and the like, and by the crustacea, e.g. carabi and their
kindred, for these also lay eggs in consequence of copulation, and the
male has often been seen uniting with the female.
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