People that rear peafowl put the eggs under the barn-door hen, owing
to the fact that when the peahen is brooding over them the peacock
attacks her and tries to trample on them; owing to this circumstance
some birds of wild varieties run away from the males and lay their
eggs and brood in solitude. Only two eggs are put under a barn-door
hen, for she could not brood over and hatch a large number. They
take every precaution, by supplying her with food, to prevent her
going off the eggs and discontinuing the brooding.
With male birds about pairing time the testicles are obviously
larger than at other times, and this is conspicuously the case with
the more salacious birds, such as the barn-door cock and the cock
partridge; the peculiarity is less conspicuous in such birds as are
intermittent in regard to pairing.
10
So much for the conception and generation of birds.
It has been previously stated that fishes are not all oviparous.
Fishes of the cartilaginous genus are viviparous; the rest are
oviparous. And cartilaginous fishes are first oviparous internally and
subsequently viviparous; they rear the embryos internally, the
batrachus or fishing-frog being an exception.
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