Nec illi adversatur Aristoteles[1], eiusmodi conceptum [208] nulla facta venti mentione materiae excrementitiae acceptum referens, ubi causam reddit, quod uncae subventanea non pariant: subventanei, inquiens, conceptus in iis fiunt avibus, quae non volaces sunt, ut uncae, sed multiparae (tales autem Gallinae sunt) quod excremento ipsae abundant: uncis in alas, et pennas id vertitur, corpusque exiguum calidum, et siccum habetur. Decessus autem menstruorum, et genitura excrementum sunt. Et paulo post[2], Fiunt subventanea ova, quoniam materia seminalis in faemina est, nec menstruorum discessio fit avibus, ut viviparis sanguine praeditis. Volacibus autem non gignuntur, scilicet eadem causa, qua neque multa ab iis ipsis generantur. Uncunguibus enim parum excrementi inest, et marem desiderant ad excrementi commotionem. Etenim cum ex materiae abundantia hypenemia ova generari etiam ex propria sententia hic dicat, non est quod prius allata eius verba nobis {negocium} <negotium> facessant. Ea enim nominis etymum tantum testantur. Itaque illic causam efficientem, hic materialem assignat.

And Aristotle does not set himself against him - Albertus - when ascribing this kind of conception as due to secretory matter without any mention of the wind, since he adduces as reason the fact that hook-nailed birds do not lay windy eggs, when he says: windy conceptions take place in those birds which are not flyers, such on the contrary they are the hook-nailed ones, but in those who lay many eggs (such are in fact the hens) being that they have abundance of secretion: in hook-nailed ones it is directed to wings and feathers, and a small, warm and dry body is present in them. For the menstrual flow and the seminal liquid are a secretion. And a little later: Wind-eggs are created because there is the seminal material in the female, and no menstrual flow occurs in birds, as on the contrary it occurs in viviparous creatures endowed with blood. <...> They are not produced by flying birds, evidently because of the same reason why they do not lay many eggs. For there is little secretion in hook-clawed birds, and they need the male in order to set the secretion in motion. Even though he says here that also according to his own opinion wind-eggs are generated from an abundance of matter, there is no reason why his earlier words should trouble us. For they testify only to the etymon of the word. Thus in the former passage he assigns the efficient cause, in the latter passage the material cause.

Haud improbo etiam Plinii[3] sententiam, qui mutua inter se libidinis imaginatione ova talia concipere dixit. Omnino etenim verisimile est, seminalis materiae redundantiam ingentem pruritum, ac titillationem in partibus genitalibus excitare, unde postmodum sese concepisse imaginentur, maxime si altera faemella, ut quandoque fit, alteram ineat. Quod vero Plinius addit et pulvere concipere: id, ut videtur, ex Graeco aliquo authore mutuatus est. Graeci quidem ἁφήν tum pulverem vocant, tum tactum, tum contrectationem. Cum vero et Gallinae eiusmodi ova manu contrectatae, teste Aristotele[4] et Oppiano[5] pariant, dubitandum videretur, numquid Plinius in translatione illius dictionis hallucinatus fuerit. Attamen cum contra afferri potest, ἁφήν non simpliciter pulverem, sed illum praecipue, quo pal<a>estritae post unctionem inspergebantur, significare, ut Budaeus annotavit: et cum pulveratrices sint Gallinae, et pulveratio quoque contrectatio quaedam, et affricatio sit: hoc quoque modo sterilia huiusmodi ova ab eis concipi posset sit verisimile.

I do not disapprove of Pliny's opinion too, who said that they conceive such eggs by a mutual lecherous imagination among themselves. For it is quite likely that the great abundance of seminal matter excites an enormous itching and tickling in the genital parts, whence they later imagine that they themselves conceived, especially if a female mounts another one, as sometimes happens. What Pliny adds, that they also conceive by the dust; it seems he borrowed this statement from some Greek author. For the Greeks call haphën either the dust, or the touch, or the palpation. Since, according to Aristotle and Oppian of Apamea, also hens lay such eggs when touched by a hand, it would seem a matter of doubt whether by chance Pliny made a mistake when translating that word. Nevertheless, since one can object that haphën is not simply meaning dust, but overall that which wrestlers were sprinkling on themselves after rubbing with oil, as Guillaume Budé annotated: and since hens are dust-bathers and also a dust-bath is a kind of touching and rubbing, it is likely that sterile eggs of this kind can be conceived by them also in this fashion.

Erant Aristotelis[6] aevo, qui eiusmodi ova reliquias partus esse crederent, quas coitus fecerit; sed hos ille hallucinari ex eo ostendit, quod multae Gallinae iuvencae nunquam Gallum expertae ova pariant. Eiusmodi ova, etsi alioqui omnes partes videbantur habere, inanimata esse, et ad generationem inepta, et dicit Aristoteles[7], et experientia quotidiana observamus, quoniam principio carent, quod a maris semine affertur. Reddi tamen foecunda posse alibi[8] docet, si Gallina, quae ea iam concepit, coeat nondum mutato ovo ex luteo in album. At si iam candidum acceperunt humorem, fieri non posse, ut in foecunda mutentur. Verum eiuscemodi doctrina ipsi Aristoteli videtur adversari: quoniam si ex albumine, ut ipse alibi docet, et experientia comprobat, pullus generetur, cur non post superveniens Gallus id vivificum reddat, quando ipsum luteum ambit? Facilius enim albumini quam luteo commisceri posse quis non videt? Quod si iam membranam utrumque ambisse, semenque iniectum per eam excludi obijcias, id nihil obesse ex eodem Aristotele[9] rursus probo, qui ova piscium iam exclusa etiam, post a mare iniecto super ea semine foecunda reddi asserit.

In the time of Aristotle some people believed that such eggs were the remains of the delivery and that copulation created them, but he shows that they were mistaken by the fact that many young hens who never experienced with a rooster lay eggs. That eggs of this kind are lifeless and unfit for generation although in other respects they may seem to have all their parts, also Aristotle is saying this, and we observe this through daily experience, since they lack the principle ascribed to the semen of the male. Elsewhere he says that however they can be rendered fertile if the hen who has already conceived them should copulate while the egg has not yet changed from yellow to white. But if they have already received the white liquid it cannot occur that they turn fertile. This theory seems, however, to clash with Aristotle: since if the chick is generated from the albumen, as he himself elsewhere teaches and as experience proves, why a treading rooster afterwards does not render it able to give birth when it surrounds the yolk itself? For who does not see that it can more easily mingle with albumen rather than with yolk? Since, if one should object that the membrane already wrapped up both and that the semen injected through it is excluded, once more I find confirmation from Aristotle himself that this does not hinder at all, who asserts that the already laid eggs of fishes are afterwards rendered fertile by the semen sprayed upon them by the male.

Et, ut de Gallina dicamus, Albertus author est, semen Galli, quando in matrice ovum venti reperit, aliqua ex parte, aut etiam omnino praeter testam, et pellem completum, huic non coniungi tantum, sed totum ovum etiam foecundum reddere. Quod forte post videns longe aliter docet Aristoteles, dum avem, quae ovum coitu conceptum gerit, si cum alio mare coierit, simile eius, quocum postea coivit, omne pullorum genus excludere statuit, ideoque nonnullos, qui, ut Gallinae generosae procreentur, operam dant, ita mutatis admissariis facere, tanquam maris semen, inquit[10], sua facultate materiam contentam in faemina qualitate tantum afficiat, non etiam misceatur, constitutionemque subeat. Quibus verbis aperte concludit, ex ovis conceptis posterioris coitus specimen prae se ferre, sed de luteo non meminit. Nam si semen vitae primordia albumini subministrare debebat, necessario etiam ei commisceri necesse erat, quod Albertus faeminae sperma vi matricis, ac testium ad ovi substantiam attractum vocare non est veritus. Caeterum, quae coivit Gallina, vel alia quaevis volucris ovum concipit superius ad septum transversum: ubi primo minutum, et candidum cernitur, ut Aristoteles alibi tradit, mox rubrum cruentumque, deinde increscens luteum, et flavum efficitur totum: iam amplius auctum discernitur, ita ut intus pars lutea sit, foris candida ambiat: ubi perfectum est, absolvitur, atque exit putamine, dum paritur, molli, sed protinus durescente, quibuscunque emergit portionibus, nisi vitio vulvae defecerit.

And, to speak of the hen, Albertus declares that the rooster's semen when finds a wind-egg in the womb, complete in some its parts or quite complete except for shell and shell’s membranes, not only joins with the egg but even renders it entirely fertile. Perhaps, analyzing this a posteriori, Aristotle explains this in a quite different manner, since he stated that a bird carrying an egg conceived by coitus, if it will mate with another male, there will hatch a variety of chicks similar to that one it mated with afterwards, and that therefore some people, in order that prolific hens are generated, with the change of mounting males spare no efforts to obtain as result, he says, that the semen of the male by its faculty affects the material contained in the female only with regard to the quality, not even mixing with it and taking place of its composition. By these words he clearly demonstrates that he is adducing a proof from the eggs conceived by a subsequent coition, but he does not mention the yolk. For if the semen had to pass on to the albumen the principles of the life, it had also to be mixed with it, since Albertus did not hesitate to define the semen of the female as attracted toward the egg’s substance by the force of uterus and testicles. On the other hand the hen who mated, or any other bird, first conceives the egg near the transverse septum: where at the beginning it appears small and snow-white, as elsewhere Aristotle says, afterwards red and blood-spotted, then as it grows it becomes entirely yellow and golden: when it is larger it can be seen with the inner part which is yellow, the white part is at the periphery: when it is completed, it is delivered, and while it is laid it issues forth with a soft shell, but soon growing hard, and it issues forth with whatever parts unless it is imperfect because of an uterus’ malformation.

Atque istaec est doctrina Aristotelica, sed mirum quod uteri non meminerit, in quo tamen ovum perficitur, etsi extra eum primo propriae substantiae habeat rudimenta, sed formam absolutissimam in eo recipit. Locus itaque inchoationis, quae ab Aristotelis interprete conceptio dicitur, est ventris inferioris superior, ac media pars ad septum transversum. Dixit enim[11], faeminae concipiunt ova ad septum transversum. Hoc autem addimus nos ex anatomica inspectione esse supra ipsam spinam ad divaricationem vasorum, quae in crura descendunt.

And this is the theory of Aristotle, but it is strange that he did not mention the uterus in which nonetheless the egg is perfected, although outside it the egg is firstly in possession of the first principles of its proper essence, but the egg receives its perfect form in it. Therefore the place of the rudiment, which by Aristotle’s translator is called conception, is the upper part of the lower abdomen and the middle one near the transverse septum. For he said, females conceive eggs near the transverse septum. I add from anatomical inspection that this place is in front of the spine near the fork of blood vessels descending to legs.