第12章

Why is the uterus always internal, but the testes sometimes internal, sometimes external? The reason for the uterus always being internal is that in this is contained the egg or foetus, which needs guarding, shelter, and maturation by concoction, while the outer surface of the body is easily injured and cold.The testes vary in position because they also need shelter and a covering to preserve them and to mature the semen; for it would be impossible for them, if chilled and stiffened, to be drawn up and discharge it.

Therefore, whenever the testes are visible, they have a cuticular covering known as the scrotum.If the nature of the skin is opposed to this, being too hard to be adapted for enclosing them or for being soft like a true 'skin', as with the scaly integument of fish and reptiles, then the testes must needs be internal.Therefore they are so in dolphins and all the cetacea which have them, and in the oviparous quadrupeds among the scaly animals.The skin of birds also is hard so that it will not conform to the size of anything and enclose it neatly.(This is another reason with all these animals for their testes being internal besides those previously mentioned as arising necessarily from the details of copulation.) For the same reason they are internal in the elephant and hedgehog, for the skin of these, too, is not well suited to keep the protective part separate.

[The position of the uterus differs in animals viviparous within themselves and those externally oviparous, and in the latter class again it differs in those which have the uterus low and those which have it near the hypozoma, as in fishes compared with birds and oviparous quadrupeds.And it is different again in those which produce young in both ways, being oviparous internally and viviparous externally.For those which are viviparous both internally and externally have the uterus placed on the abdomen, as men, cattle, dogs, and the like, since it is expedient for the safety and growth of the foetus that no weight should be upon the uterus.]