The season for
intercourse is spring. The male allows an interval of three years to
elapse after commerce with a female: and, after it has once
impregnated a female, it has no intercourse with her again. The period
of gestation with the female is two years; and only one young animal
is produced at a time, in other words it is uniparous. And the
embryo is the size of a calf two or three months old.
15
So much for the copulations of such animals as copulate.
We now proceed to treat of generation both with respect to
copulating and non-copulating animals, and we shall commence with
discussing the subject of generation in the case of the testaceans.
The testacean is almost the only genus that throughout all its
species is non-copulative.
The porphyrae, or purple murices, gather together to some one
place in the spring-time, and deposit the so-called 'honeycomb'.
This substance resembles the comb, only that it is not so neat and
delicate; and looks as though a number of husks of white chick-peas
were all stuck together. But none of these structures has any open
passage, and the porphyra does not grow out of them, but these and all
other testaceans grow out of mud and decaying matter.
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