Hypenemic or unfruitful eggs, begin to change at this time, as the critical day when they must show their disposition. As fertile eggs are changed by the inherent plastic force into colliquament (which afterwards passes into blood), so do wind-eggs now begin to change and to putrefy. I have, nevertheless, occasionally observed the spot or cicatricula to expand considerably even in hypenemic eggs, but never to rise into a cumulus, nor to become circumscribed by regularly disposed concentric circles. Sometimes I have even observed the vitellus to get somewhat clearer, and to become liquefied; but this was unequally; there were flocks, as if formed by sudden coagulation, swimming dispersed through it like clouds. And although such eggs could not yet be called putrid, nor were they offensive, still were they disposed to putrefaction; and, if continued under the hen, they soon arrived at this state, the rottenness commencing at the very spot where in fruitful eggs the reproductive germ appears.
The more perfect or forward eggs then, about the end of the fourth day, contain a double or bipartite pulsating vesicle, each portion reciprocating the other’s motion, in such order and manner that whilst one is contracting, the other is distended with blood and ruddy in colour; but this last contracting anon forces out its charge of blood, and, an instant being interposed, the former rises again and repeats its pulse. And it is easy to perceive that the action of these vesicles is contraction, by which the blood is moved and propelled into the vessels.
“On the fourth day,” says Aldrovandus,[181] “two puncta are perceived, both of which are in motion; these, undoubtedly, are the heart and the liver, viscera which Aristotle allowed to eggs incubated for three days.”
The Philosopher,[182] however, nowhere says anything of the kind; neither, for the most part, are the viscera mentioned conspicuous before the tenth day. And I am indeed surprised that Aldrovandus should have taken one of these pulsating points for the liver, as if this viscus were ever moved in any such manner! It seems much better to believe that with the growth of the embryo one of the pulsating points is changed into the auricles, the other into the ventricles of the heart. For in the adult, the ventricles are filled in the same manner by the auricles, and by their contraction they are straightway emptied again, as we have shown in our treatise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood.