n comes forth from the woman,
it is entire and perfect. Polybus, that a hundred and eighty-two days
and a half suffice for the bringing forth of a living child; that is,
six months, in which space of time the sun moves from one tropic to the
other; and this is called seven months, for the days which are over plus
in the sixth are accounted to give the seventh month. Those children
which are born in the eighth month cannot live, for, the infant then
falling from the womb, the navel, which is the cause of nourishment, is
thereby too much wrenched; and is the reason that the infant languishes
and hath an atrophy. The astrologers, that eight months are enemies to
every birth, seven are friends and kind to it. The signs of the zodiac
are then enemies, when they fall upon those stars which are lords
of houses; whatever infant is then born will have a life short and
unfortunate. Those signs of the zodiac which are malevolent and
injurious to generation are those pairs of which the final is reckoned
the eighth from the first, as the first and the eighth, the second and
the ninth, etc; so is the Ram unsociable with Scorpio, the Bull with
Sagittarius, the Twins with the Goat, the Crab with Aquarius, the Lion
with Pisces, the Virgin with the Ram. Upon this reason those infants
that are born in the seventh or tenth months are like to live, but those
in the eighth month will die.

CHAPTER XIX. OF THE GENERATION OF ANIMALS, HOW ANIMALS ARE BEGOTTEN, AND
WHETHER THEY ARE OBNOXIOUS TO CORRUPTION.

Those philosophers who entertain the opinion that the world had
an original do likewise assert that all animals are generated and
corruptible. The followers of Epicurus, who gives an eternity to
the world, affirm the generation of animals ariseth from the various
permutation of parts mutually among themselves, for they are parts of
this world. With them Anaxagoras and Euripides concur:

Nothing dies,
Different changes give their various forms.

Anaximander's opinion is, that the first animals were generated in
moisture, and were enclosed in bark on which thorns grew; but in process
of time they came upon dry land, and this thorny bark with which they
were covered being broken, they lived only for a short space of time.
Empedocles says, that the first generation of animals and plants was by
no means completed, for the parts were disjoined and would not admit of
a union; the second preparation and for the