Note 598 — Chapter XV · ON THE SHAPES OF EGGS, AND OF CERTAIN OTHER HOLLOW STRUCTURES

In so far as our explanation involves a shaping or moulding of the egg by the uterus or “oviduct” (an agency supplemented by the proper tensions of the egg), it is curious to note that this is very much the same as that old view of Telesius regarding the formation of the embryo (De rerum natura, VI, cc. 4 and 10), which he had inherited from Galen, and of which Bacon speaks (Nov. Org. cap. 50; cf. Ellis’s note). Bacon expressly remarks that “Telesius should have been able to shew the like formation in the shells of eggs.” This old theory of embryonic modelling survives only in our usage of the term “matrix” for a “mould.”