Testa, inquit[1], membrana mollis fuit. Id enim quod testa futurum est: perfecto ovo, durum ac rigidum ita modice evadit, ut exeat adhuc molle. Dolorem enim moveret, nisi ita exiret. Egressum statim refrigeratum duratur, evaporato humore quam primum, qui exiguus inest, relictaque portione terrena.

The shell, Aristotle says, has been a soft membrane. For what is destined to be the shell is as follows: when the egg is completed it comes out so moderately hard and stiff that it comes forth still soft. For it would provoke pain if it did not issue in this manner. After it came out, being immediately cooled, it hardens as at once its moisture evaporates, which is slight, and the earthly portion remains.

Nec obstat, quod aliquando visa fuerint ova cruore suffusa, quale mihi allatum fuit {ad} <a.d.> XVI. Kal. Maii, domi meae natum, cuius putamen totum erat punctis, et maculis, et lineolis sanguineis cruentatum, non enim id ex uteri laesione fieri putarim, sed potius ob diapedesim, seu transudationem copiosioris sanguinis, quo venas uteri plus aequo aliquando turgere contingit.

Nor it is clashing the fact that sometimes eggs have been seen to be suffused with blood, such as that laid in my farm which was brought to me on the sixteenth day before the kalends of May - April 16th, whose entire shell was gory by specks, spots, and little steaks, and I wouldn't think that this is occurring from injury to the uterus but rather because of diapedesis, or transudation of some quantity of blood, owing to which the veins of the uterus sometimes happen to swell up more than normally.

Oppianus[2] scribit facilius parere, si festucam e terra ore apprehensam dorso imposuerint: sed credere illi sine superstitione hac in re non possum: scio tamen Gallinas parientes eiusmodi festucas saepe ore contrectare, pericarphismumque Plutarcho[3] dici, cum Gallinae, ut scribit Theophrastus, quod Aristoteles[4] etiam posuit, et est a Plinio[5] repetitum, {a}edito ovo, ceu religione quadam sese, et ova lustrant. Illud etiam admirandum videtur, cur noctu tenera pariant, eademque nisi ad magnam usque diei partem completa, ac dura. Sed hoc rursus admirabilius, quod quae alias tenera erant {a}editurae, dura parturiant, si aliquas horas antelucanas viderint lucernae lumen, ita ut sub ortum Solis cogantur ea parere pauculo sale supposito, quo ingenio utuntur gulae magistri, dum ova recentissima sorbenda parant. Causam huius rei reddere conatur Ambrosius Nolanus[6] hoc modo: quod scilicet lumen ignis visum, sensumque Gallinarum obtenebret, ac perturbet, quamobrem velut stupidae, et ebriae nihil cogitant de cibo parando, quaerendoque, sed potius sileant, cubentque ac facillime se et capi, et tractari sinant. Quod si vero eo tempore lumen absit, tum antelucanis horis surgant, sedesque deserant, cibum sibi quaesiturae, unde veluti relicto officio concoquendi ovum nisi post Solis ortum durescere queat. Concoquere vero tum maxime, cum nihil vident, aut visu turbantur, signum est, quod obcaecatae acu Gallinae, Capique, caeteraeque volucres mirifice pinguescant.

Oppian from Apamea writes that hens lay more easily if they place upon their back a blade plucked from the ground with the mouth: but I cannot believe him without superstition: however, I know that when hens are laying often wield such straws with the mouth, and that by Plutarch this is called perikarphismòs – the covering themselves with straw, being that the hens after laid an egg, as Theophrastus writes, and also Aristotle affirmed and is repeated by Pliny, as for a sort of ritual they purify themselves and eggs. It also seems strange why they lay soft eggs at night and the same eggs are not complete and hard but when a large part of the day has passed. But it is more strange that those hens who otherwise would have laid soft eggs, they lay hard eggs if they saw the light of a lantern some hours before dawn, so that they are forced to lay their eggs at about sunrise with a little salt placed under them, an ingenious expedient used by gastronomy experts when they get very fresh eggs for sucking. Ambrogio Leone - Ambrosius Leo Nolanus - tries to explain the reason for this in the following manner: for the light of the fire dims and perturbs the vision and the perception’s faculty of hens, thus like dazed and drunken creatures they give no thought to getting or seeking food, but on the contrary keep silent and roost, and allow themselves to be taken and handled very easily. But if at that time there is no light, then they rise in the hours before dawn, desert their pens looking for food, hence, having been so to speak abandoned the job of concoction, the egg cannot get hard but after sunrise. For that the more they devote themselves to the concoction the less they see nothing or are not troubled when seeing, it is shown by the fact that hens blinded with a needle, as well as capons and other birds, grow wonderfully fat.

Solent in Gallinariis alveoli lignei, sive cistulae vimineae disponi, in quibus Gallinae sine ovorum detrimento facilius parturiant. Eiusmodi cistulas etiam vascula viminea appellant, Varro[7], et Columella[8] Gallinarum cubilia, Apuleius[9] {calatha} <calathos>, et lecticulas, cum ait: Heus puer calathum foetui Gallinaceo destinatum angulo solito collocato, ita uti fuerit iussum puero procurante Gallina consuetae lecticulae, spreto cubili, etc. Quibus verbis etiam indicat, suo aevo eiusmodi lectos in angulis Gallinariorum solere locari, ut nostri agricolae hodierno tempore adhuc etiam faciunt. Quod vero apud veteres etiam stramen vasculis illis imponerent, colligo quoque ex Iuvenale[10].

Grandia praeterea tortoque calentia f{o}eno

Ova adsunt ipsis cum matribus.

Libentius vero, et commodius pariunt, cum iam prius ovum in nido conspiciunt: quamobrem cum aliqua ova tam propria quam aliena ex<s>orbent, aliqui marmor, vel similem lapidem candidum ad ovi similitudinem efformatum nido imponunt.

They are usually placed in hen houses wooden tubs or small wicker baskets in which the hens can more easily lay without injury to eggs. They call these baskets also wicker vessels, Varro and Columella call them nests, Apuleius calls them baskets and nests when he says: “Hey boy, place in the usual corner the basket destined to the hen’s eggs laying.” When the boy was doing as he was ordered, the hen, after she refused as bed the usual nest, etc. By these words he also indicates that in his time beds of this kind were usually set in the corners of hen houses, as still now today also our farmers do That also among ancients they arranged straw on these containers I gather from Juvenal too:

Furthermore there are large and warm eggs in the twisted straw

with the mothers themselves.

But they lay more willingly and better if already beforehand they see an egg in the nest: therefore when they swallow some egg, either its own or of someone else, some people place in the nest marble or a similar snow-white egg-shaped stone.

Ovum autem cum perfectum est, et monstrositatis expers, bicolor est, forma tereti, et pene sphaerali. Sed cum in his animalibus, quorum partus numerosus est, monstra saepe nascantur, et praecipue in avium genere, earumque potissimum in Gallinis, ut Aristoteles[11] docet, itaque quam breviter fieri poterit, de monstrosis partubus aliquid dicamus. Eorum causam in materia esse, et putat, et probat iam citato loco Philosophus eam autem in Gallinis magis, quam Columbis, quarum partus tamen etiam numerosus est, abundare, non modo, quod saepe pariant, ut illae, verumetiam quod multos simul conceptus intra se contineant, et omnibus temporibus coeant. Hinc etiam gemina parere plura. Cohaerere enim conceptus, quoniam in propinquo alter alteri sit, quomodo interdum fructus arborum complures. Quod si vitelli distinguantur membrana, geminos pullos discretos sine ulla supervacua parte generari. Sin vitelli continuentur, nec ulla interiecta membrana disterminentur, pullos ex his monstrificos prodire corpore, et capite uno, cruribus quaternis, alis totidem, quoniam superiora ex albumine generentur, et prius, (vitellus enim eis cibus est) pars autem inferior postea instituatur, quanquam cibus idem, indiscretusque suppeditetur. Albertus etiam propter corruptionem vitelli, unde alimentum suppeditandum erat, pullum vult imperfecte formari, et quasdam partes in ipso non absolutas inveniri, aut simul coniunctas, ut in abortu animalis vivipari ante perfectionem lineamentorum foetus.

When the egg is completed and free from anomalies, it is of two colors, roundish in shape and almost spherical. But since among those animals whose offspring is large, freaks are often born, and especially in the genus of birds, and among these firstly in hens, as Aristotle points out, then let me say something as briefly as I can about monstrous births. The Philosopher thinks and proves in the passage already referred that their cause is in the material and that this is more abundant in hens than in doves, whose offspring is however large too, and not only because they lay often like the former ones, but also because the hens contain simultaneously many products of conception within themselves and copulate at all seasons. Hence they lay also several twin eggs. For the products of conception cling together, since they are close each other, as sometimes it happens when the fruits of trees are very numerous. But if the yolks are separated by a membrane, separate twin chicks are generated without any exceeding part. But if the yolks are held together nor are bounded by any interposed membrane, from them they hatch freak chicks with one body and one head, with four legs and as many wings, since the upper parts are generated from the albumen, and earlier, (for the yolk is food for them), while the lower part comes into existence afterwards, although an identical and equal food is supplied. Also Albertus thinks that the chick grows up imperfectly because of the corruption of the yolk whence the food had to be supplied, and that in it - the chick - they are found some parts which did not come untied, or which are joined together, as in an abortion of a viviparous animal before the perfection of the lineaments of the foetus.

Non debebant itaque antiqui eiusmodi monstra prodigii loco habere, si ex nimia materiae abundantia nasci certum est. Iulius Obsequens[12] author est, C. Claudio, M. Perpenna Coss. pullum Gallinaceum quadrupedem natum esse, et prodigii loco habitum. Ego aliquot monstrorum icones suo loco exibiturus sum. Caeterum Gallinae nonnullae, ut idem Aristoteles[13] alibi author est, ova mollia, hoc est. sine testa pariunt vitio, quae Albertus inter subventanea annumerat. Nicander existimat eiusmodi ova parere propter ictum, vel propter multitudinem ovorum se invicem comprimentium.

Thus the ancients should not have regarded monstrosities of this kind as a prodigy, being that it is certain that they are created from a too great abundance of matter. Julius Obsequens tells us that in the consulship of Caius Claudius and Marcus Perpenna a gallinaceous chick was born with four legs, and that it was regarded as a prodigy. I shall exhibit some pictures of monstrosities in their proper place. Furthermore, some hens, as elsewhere Aristotle writes, lay soft eggs, that is without shell, because of a fault, which Albertus reckons among wind-eggs. Nicander thinks they lay eggs of this kind because of a blow or because of the large number of eggs pressing against each other.