第56章
Rams single out the oldest ewes for copulation, and show no regard for the young ones. And, as has been stated, the issue of the younger ewes is poorer than that of the older ones.
The boar is good for breeding purposes until he is three years of age; but after that age his issue deteriorates, for after that age his vigour is on the decline. The boar is most capable after a good feed, and with the first sow it mounts; if poorly fed or put to many females, the copulation is abbreviated, and the litter is comparatively poor. The first litter of the sow is the fewest in number; at the second litter she is at her prime. The animal, as it grows old, continues to breed, but the sexual desire abates. When they reach fifteen years, they become unproductive, and are getting old. If a sow be highly fed, it is all the more eager for sexual commerce, whether old or young; but, if it be over-fattened in pregnancy, it gives the less milk after parturition. With regard to the age of the parents, the litter is the best when they are in their prime; but with regard to the seasons of the year, the litter is the best that comes at the beginning of winter; and the summer litter the poorest, consisting as it usually does of animals small and thin and flaccid.
The boar, if it be well fed, is sexually capable at all hours, night and day; but otherwise is peculiarly salacious early in the morning.
As it grows old the sexual passion dies away, as we have already remarked. Very often a boar, when more or less impotent from age or debility, finding itself unable to accomplish the sexual commerce with due speed, and growing fatigued with the standing posture, will roll the sow over on the ground, and the pair will conclude the operation side by side of one another. The sow is sure of conception if it drops its lugs in rutting time; if the ears do not thus drop, it may have to rut a second time before impregnation takes place.
Bitches do not submit to the male throughout their lives, but only until they reach a certain maturity of years. As a general rule, they are sexually receptive and conceptive until they are twelve years old; although, by the way, cases have been known where dogs and bitches have been respectively procreative and conceptive to the ages of eighteen and even of twenty years. But, as a rule, age diminishes the capability of generation and of conception with these animals as with all others.
The female of the camel is opisthuretic, and submits to the male in the way above described; and the season for copulation in Arabia is about the month of October. Its period of gestation is twelve months; and it is never delivered of more than one foal at a time. The female becomes sexually receptive and the male sexually capable at the age of three years. After parturition, an interval of a year elapses before the female is again receptive to the male.
The female elephant becomes sexually receptive when ten years old at the youngest, and when fifteen at the oldest; and the male is sexually capable when five years old, or six. 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. The substance, is, in fact, an excretion of the porphyra and the ceryx; for it is deposited by the ceryx as well. Such, then, of the testaceans as deposit the honeycomb are generated spontaneously like all other testaceans, but they certainly come in greater abundance in places where their congeners have been living previously. At the commencement of the process of depositing the honeycomb, they throw off a slippery mucus, and of this the husklike formations are composed.
These formations, then, all melt and deposit their contents on the ground, and at this spot there are found on the ground a number of minute porphyrae, and porphyrae are caught at times with these animalculae upon them, some of which are too small to be differentiated in form. If the porphyrae are caught before producing this honey-comb, they sometimes go through the process in fishing-creels, not here and there in the baskets, but gathering to some one spot all together, just as they do in the sea; and owing to the narrowness of their new quarters they cluster together like a bunch of grapes.