mother than the father, because the mother contributes more towards it.
And they think it may be further instanced, from the endeared affection
they bear them; for that, besides their contributing seminal matters,
they feed and nourish the child with the purest fountain of blood, until
its birth. Which opinion Galen affirms, by allowing children to
participate most of the mother; and ascribes the difference of sex to
the different operations of the menstrual blood; but this reason of the
likeness he refers to the power of the seed; for, as the plants receive
more nourishment from fruitful ground, than from the industry of the
husbandman, so the infant receives more abundance from the mother than
the father. For the seed of both is cherished in the womb, and then
grows to perfection, being nourished with blood. And for this reason it
is, they say, that children, for the most part, love their mothers best,
because they receive the most of their substance from their mother; for
about nine months she nourishes her child in the womb with the purest
blood; then her love towards it newly born, and its likeness, do clearly
show that the woman affords seed, and contributes more towards making
the child than the man.

But in this all the ancients were very erroneous; for the testicles, so
called in women, afford not only seed, but are two eggs, like those of
fowls and other creatures; neither have they any office like those of
men, but are indeed the ovaria, wherein the eggs are nourished by the
sanguinary vessels disposed throughout them; and from thence one or more
as they are fecundated by the man's seed is separated and conveyed into
the womb by the ovaducts. The truth of this is plain, for if you boil
them the liquor will be of the same colour, taste and consistency, with
the taste of birds' eggs. If any object that they have no shells, that
signifies nothing: for the eggs of fowls while they are on the ovary,
nay, after they are fastened into the uterus, have no shell. And though