But whensoever
creatures are spontaneously generated, either in other animals, in the
soil, or on plants, or in the parts of these, and when such are
generated male and female, then from the copulation of such
spontaneously generated males and females there is generated a
something-a something never identical in shape with the parents, but a
something imperfect. For instance, the issue of copulation in lice
is nits; in flies, grubs; in fleas, grubs egg-like in shape; and
from these issues the parent-species is never reproduced, nor is any
animal produced at all, but the like nondescripts only.
First, then, we must proceed to treat of 'covering' in regard to
such animals as cover and are covered; and then after this to treat in
due order of other matters, both the exceptional and those of
general occurrence.
2
Those animals, then, cover and are covered in which there is a
duality of sex, and the modes of covering in such animals are not in
all cases similar nor analogous. For the red-blooded animals that
are viviparous and furnished with feet have in all cases organs
adapted for procreation, but the sexes do not in all cases come
together in like manner.
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