If
the membrane be pulled to bits the embryo is revealed, as big as one
of the large kind of ants; and all the limbs are plain to see,
including the penis, and the eyes also, which as in other animals
are of great size. But the female embryo, if it suffer abortion during
the first three months, is as a rule found to be undifferentiated;
if however it reach the fourth month it comes to be subdivided and
quickly attains further differentiation. In short, while within the
womb, the female infant accomplishes the whole development of its
parts more slowly than the male, and more frequently than the
man-child takes ten months to come to perfection. But after birth, the
females pass more quickly than the males through youth and maturity
and age; and this is especially true of those that bear many children,
as indeed I have already said.
4
When the womb has conceived the seed, straightway in the
majority of cases it closes up until seven months are fulfilled; but
in the eighth month it opens, and the embryo, if it be fertile,
descends in the eighth month. But such embryos as are not fertile
but are devoid of breath at eight months old, their mothers do not
bring into the world by parturition at eight months, neither does
the embryo descend within the womb at that period nor does the womb
open.
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