Aristotle · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| Similarly, female pigs also lack tusks. In some cases both sexes have them, but they are larger and better developed in the males, as with cattle, whose horns are stronger in the males than in the female cattle. V. All the parts that animals have, both internal and external, have already been discussed, and so have their senses, voice, and sleep, and which animals are female and which male, in every case; what remains is to go through their generation, beginning with the most basic kinds. There are many modes of generation, showing great variety: in some ways unlike one another, in some ways resembling one another. Since the kinds have already been distinguished, we must now try to conduct our study in the same way; except that then we began by examining the parts starting from man, but now we must speak of him last, because his case involves the most extensive treatment. We must begin first with the shelled animals, then after these deal with the soft-shelled animals, and take up the rest in this same order thereafter: the soft-bodied animals and the insects, and after these the class of fish, both the live-bearing and the egg-laying kinds, then the class of birds; after these we must speak of the land animals, both the live-bearing and the egg-laying. Among the four-footed animals some are live-bearing, and among the two-footed, man alone is.
2| Now this is common to animals as it is to plants: some come from the seed of other plants, while others come about spontaneously, once some such originating principle has been formed, and among these, some draw their nourishment from the earth, while others come to be within other plants, as has been said in the study concerning plants. In the same way, among animals too, some come to be from animals, in accordance with kinship of form, while others come about spontaneously and not from kin; and among these, some arise from decaying earth and plants, as happens with many insects, while others arise within the animals themselves, from residues in their parts. Now among those whose generation comes from kindred animals, in those cases where there is both a female and a male, they are generated by pairing; but in the class of fish, some come to be that are neither male nor female — the same in genus as other fish, but different in species, and some even entirely peculiar to themselves. Others are female, but never male; from these come, as among birds, the wind-eggs. Now all these products among birds are unfertile — for nature is able to bring their process to completion only as far as the egg — unless some other manner of union with the males happens to them;
3| about which matters greater precision will be given later. In some fish, when they spontaneously produce eggs, it happens that animals also come to be from these; except that in some cases this happens by themselves, in others not without a male; how this happens will also become clear in what follows, for much the same thing happens among birds as well. Whatever comes to be spontaneously among animals, or in earth, or in plants, or in the parts of these, and possesses both male and female, when these pair something does come to be from them, but in no case the same as the parent, only something incomplete: for example, from lice mating come what are called nits, from flies come maggots, and from moths come egg-shaped grubs, from which neither the parents themselves come to be, nor any other animal, but only things of this same kind. First, then, we must speak about mating — which animals mate — and after that, about the rest in order, both what happens to each in particular and what happens to them all in common.
4| Now mating occurs among those animals in which there is a female and a male, but the acts of mating are neither alike in all of them nor carried out in the same way. For the live-bearing land animals among the blooded kinds all have the organs suited to the act of generation, yet they do not all come together in the same way; some come together from behind, joining rump to rump, as lions, hares, and lynxes do — and among hares the female often mounts the male first. Among the rest, in most cases the manner is the same: the majority of four-footed animals carry out the pairing in the way available to them, with the male mounting the female, and the entire class of birds does so in this one and only way. There are, however, some differences even among birds: in some, the female crouches down onto the ground and the male mounts her, as with bustards and domestic cocks; in others the female does not crouch down, as with cranes — in these the male leaps upon the female and mates with her, and they come together quickly, as sparrows also do. Among the four-footed animals, bears lie on their sides to mate, in the same manner as the others do on their feet, with the underside of the males against the underside of the females as they lie prone;
5| whereas land hedgehogs mate upright, with their underparts turned toward each other. Among the live-bearing animals that have some size, the females do not tolerate the males mounting them — hinds do not tolerate stags, except rarely, nor do cows tolerate bulls, because of the stiffness of the male organ — but instead the females crouch down and receive the semen; this has indeed been observed to happen among deer, at least among the tame ones. The wolf mates and is mated in the same way as the dog. Cats do not come together from behind; rather the male stands upright while the female puts herself beneath him; female cats are by nature highly amorous, and they entice the males into mating, and cry out while coupling. Camels mate with the female sitting down; the male mounts and mates not from behind but as the other four-footed animals do, and they spend the whole day at it, one mounting and one being mounted. They withdraw into solitude when they mate, and no one can approach them except the keeper who tends them. The camel's male organ contains a sinew so strong that a bowstring can even be made from it. Elephants mate in solitary places, especially near rivers and wherever they are accustomed to spend their time;
6| the female mates by crouching down and wading in, and the male mounts and mates from above. The seal also mates like the animals that mate from behind, and they remain joined together for a long time during mating, as dogs do; the males have a large male organ. Land animals that are four-footed and egg-laying carry out mating in the same way. Some mount as the live-bearing animals do, such as the tortoise, both the sea and the land kind. Others have some part into which the passages join, and by means of which they come together during mating, such as stingrays and frogs, and the whole class of that kind. Animals that are footless and elongated, such as snakes and morays, entwine themselves belly to belly. Snakes coil around each other so tightly that the whole body seems to belong to a single two-headed snake. The class of lizards does the same, for they carry out mating by a similar entwining.
7| All fish, except the flat cartilaginous ones, mate by coming alongside each other, belly to belly. But the flat, tailed ones, such as the skate, the sting-ray, and the like, mate not only by coming alongside but also by mounting, belly-down onto the females' backs, in the case of those whose tail has no thickness to get in the way. But the angel-sharks, and those of this kind with a thick tail, mate only by rubbing against each other, belly to belly. There are some who say they have seen certain cartilaginous fish joined from behind, like dogs. In all the cartilaginous fish the female is larger than the male; and in nearly all the other fish too the females are larger than the males. The cartilaginous fish are those just named, and also the ox-ray, the lamia shark, the eagle-ray, the torpedo-fish, the angler, and all the dogfish kind. All the cartilaginous fish, then, have been observed by many people to mate in these ways; for the coupling of all the live-bearing kinds lasts longer than that of the egg-laying kinds. Dolphins too, and all the cetaceans, mate in the same way; for the male comes alongside the female and mates with her, for a time that is neither short nor very long.
8| In some of the cartilaginous fish the males differ from the females in that the males have two appendages hanging near the outlet of the residue, while the females do not have these — as in the dogfish kind; for this holds true of all of them. No fish, then, nor any other footless animal, has testicles; but both snakes and male fish have two ducts, which become full of milt at the season of mating, and all of them emit a milky fluid. These ducts join into one, just as in birds too; for birds have their testicles inside, as do all the other footed animals that lay eggs. This duct then comes to an end and extends into the female's place of reception. In the live-bearing land animals, the duct for the seed and the duct for the residue of liquid waste are the same on the outside, but on the inside there is a separate duct, as was said before in the account of the differentiation of the parts. In those that have no bladder, the duct is also the same on the outside for the dry residue as well; but on the inside the two ducts lie close to one another. This holds alike for both the females and the males among them;
9| for they have no bladder except in the case of the tortoise, and among these the female has a single duct even though she has a bladder; tortoises belong among the egg-laying animals. The mating of the egg-laying fish is less readily observed; and for this reason most people think that the females become filled by the males through swallowing the milt. For this is often seen happening: at the mating season the females follow the males and do this, striking them beneath the belly with their mouths, and the males emit the milt faster and in greater quantity. At the time of spawning it is the males who follow the females, and as the females lay their eggs the males snap them up; the fish are produced from the eggs that escape being eaten. In Phoenicia they also use the fish to hunt one another: by putting out male mullets as decoys they draw the females together and net them, and by putting out females they draw in the males. It was this practice, then, being so often observed, that gave rise to the belief about this manner of mating; and the four-footed animals do this too — at the mating season both the males and the females spray about, and they smell one another's genitals. As for partridges, if the females stand downwind of the males, they become pregnant;
10| often too from the male's voice, if they happen to be in heat, and from his breathing down on them as he flies over; both female and male gape open-mouthed, and hold their tongues out, in the act of mating. The true coupling of the egg-laying fish is rarely seen, because after coming alongside they separate quickly; nevertheless their mating too has been observed to occur in the manner described. The soft-bodied creatures — octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid — all come together with one another in the same manner: they interlock at the mouth, fitting their tentacles to each other's tentacles. The octopus, when it sets what is called its head against the ground and spreads out its tentacles, has the other octopus fit itself onto the spread of tentacles, and they bring their suckers into continuous contact with one another. Some say too that the male has a kind of genital organ in one of his tentacles, the one on which the two largest suckers are; that this organ is sinewy in character, growing attached along the whole tentacle as far as its middle, with which he plugs it into the female's funnel. Cuttlefish and squid swim together while interlocked, fitting mouths and tentacles opposite each other, swimming in opposite directions; and they also fit together what is called the funnel, funnel to funnel. One of them swims backward, the other swims mouth-forward. She lays her eggs through what is called the blow-hole, through which some say they are also mated.
11| The crustaceans mate — spiny lobsters, lobsters, prawns, and the like — just as the four-footed animals that urinate backward do: one turns its tail up, and the other places its tail on top of it. They mate at the beginning of spring, close to the shore (for the mating of all such creatures has actually been observed), and in some places also when the figs begin to ripen. Lobsters and prawns mate in the same manner. Crabs mate front to front, bringing their folded flaps together against one another. First the smaller crab climbs on from behind; and once it has climbed on, the larger one turns sideways. In no other respect does the female differ from the male; but the female's flap is larger, standing further out and more closely covering, and it is into this that they lay their eggs and through this that the residue passes out. Neither one emits any part into the other.
12| Insects come together from behind, and then the smaller mounts the larger; and this smaller one is the male. The female inserts her organ from below into the male above, rather than the male into the female, as in the other animals. And in some cases this part appears even larger than is proportionate to the whole body, even in creatures that are very small, though in others less so. This is evident if one separates flies while they are mating. They are separated from each other only with difficulty; for the coupling of such creatures lasts a long time. This is clear in creatures within reach, such as flies and beetles. All mate in this way: flies, beetles, cockchafer grubs, and spiders, and any other such creature among those that mate. Spiders mate in the following manner, at least those that weave webs: when the female pulls on the strands of the stretched web from the middle, the male pulls back in turn; and after doing this many times, they come together and mate rear to rear; for on account of the roundness of their belly, this is the manner of coupling that suits them.
13| Mating, then, occurs in this way for all animals, but each kind of animal has fixed seasons and ages for it. Now nature wishes most animals to carry on this union at about the same time, when the changeover from winter to summer takes place; and this is the season of spring, in which most creatures, whether winged or land-dwelling or swimming, set out for pairing. But some make their mating and their bearing of young in autumn and winter too, for instance certain kinds of water-creatures and of winged creatures; man mates at practically every season, and so do many of the animals that live alongside man, because of the warmth and good feeding they get, namely those whose periods of gestation are short, such as the pig and the dog, and those winged creatures that bear young more than once. And many creatures, aiming at the proper rearing of their offspring, time their pairing so as to fit the season exactly. In human beings the male is more roused toward intercourse in winter, the female in summer. The tribe of birds, as has been said, for the most part carries out its mating and its bearing of young around spring and the beginning of summer, except for the halcyon.
14| The halcyon bears young around the winter solstice. That is why, when the solstice turns calm, the days are called halcyon days, seven before the solstice and seven after, just as Simonides also wrote of it: how, whenever for fourteen days in the winter month Zeus lulls the winds, men on earth call it the windless season, the sacred nurse of the child of the dappled halcyon. They become calm whenever it happens that the winds at the solstice blow from the south, the Pleiad having become northerly. It is said that the halcyon builds its nest in seven days, and in the remaining seven days lays its young and rears them. Now in the regions here it does not always happen that the halcyon days occur around the solstice, but in the Sicilian sea it happens almost always. The halcyon lays about five eggs.
15| The shearwater and the gulls lay their eggs on the rocks by the sea, in number two or three; but the gull lays in summer, while the shearwater lays right at the beginning of spring, straight from the solstice, and it broods just as the other birds do. Neither of these birds hibernates. Of all birds the halcyon is the rarest to see; for it is seen only, roughly speaking, around the setting of the Pleiad and the solstice, and even in anchorages, the moment it is seen flying around a ship it vanishes at once, which is why Stesichorus recalled it in just this way. The nightingale too lays at the beginning of summer, laying five or six eggs; it hibernates from autumn until spring. Insects mate and are generated even in winter, whenever there are fine days and south winds, that is, those of them that do not hibernate, such as flies and ants. Most wild animals bear young once a year, those that is that do not conceive again while already pregnant, as the hare does. Likewise most fish bear once, for instance the ones called net-fish (they are called net-fish because they are the ones caught by the net) — the tunny, the young tunny, the mullet, the chalcides, snails, the chromis, the flatfish, and the like — except for the bass;
16| this fish alone among them bears twice, and its second brood turns out weaker. The shad and the rock-fish also bear twice, but the red mullet alone bears three times. This is inferred from the spawn, for the spawn appears three times in certain places. The scorpion-fish bears twice. The sargue also bears twice, in spring and in autumn; the saupe bears once, in autumn. The tunny-fish bears once, but because it releases its young some early and some late, it seems to bear twice; the first bearing comes around the month Poseideon, before the solstice, and the second in spring. The male tunny differs from the female in that the female has, and the male does not have, a fin under the belly, which they call the apron.
17| Among the cartilaginous fish only the angel-shark bears twice; for it bears both at the start of autumn and around the setting of the Pleiad, and it is more prolific in autumn; each single bearing produces about seven or eight. Some of the dogfish, such as the starry dogfish, seem to bear twice a month; this happens because not all the eggs reach maturity at the same time. Some bear at every season, for instance the moray eel. This fish lays many eggs, and its young grow rapidly from small beginnings, as do those of the dolphinfish too; for these also become largest most quickly from the smallest start — except that the moray bears at every season, while the dolphinfish bears in spring. The smyros differs from the moray: the moray is mottled and weaker, while the smyros is uniform in color and strong, and has a color like that of the pine, and has teeth both inside and outside its mouth. It is said, as with the other creatures, that one is male and the other female. These fish come out onto dry land, and are often caught there. Now it happens that growth is rapid in practically all fish, not least in the small kind of black-tail; it lays its eggs near the shore, in weedy and thick-grown places. The sea-perch too grows quickly from small to large. The young tunny and the tunny bear young in the Black Sea and nowhere else; the mullet, the gilthead, and the bass bear chiefly wherever rivers flow in; the orkynos, the scorpion-fish, and many other kinds bear in the open sea.
19| Most fish bear young in three months, Munychion, Thargelion, and Skirophorion; few bear in autumn, such as the saupe and the sargue and other such fish, a little before the autumn equinox, and also the electric ray and the angel-shark. Some bear both in winter and in summer, as was said before — for instance in winter the bass, the mullet, and the garfish, and in summer, around the month Hecatombaion, near the summer solstice, the tunny-fish; it bears a sac-like mass, in which many small eggs form. The rhyades also bear in summer. Among the mullets, the chelon and the sargue and the fish called smyxon and the cephalus begin to be pregnant in the month Poseideon; they carry for thirty days. Some of the mullets are not produced by mating at all, but grow out of mud and sand. Now for the most part most fish conceive in spring, yet nevertheless, as has been said, some do so in summer and autumn and winter too; but this does not happen in the same way for all of them, neither straightforwardly nor kind by kind, as it does for most in spring; nor do they carry as many broods alike at the other times. And in general one must not fail to notice that, just as with plants and with the four-footed animals the region makes a great difference, not only to the general well-being of the body but also to more frequent mating and breeding, so too with fish the localities themselves make a great difference, not only in size and good feeding but also in the times of bearing and mating, since in one place the same fish breed more often, in another less often.
20| The cephalopods also breed in spring, and the cuttlefish is among the first sea creatures to breed. It breeds at every season, but lays its eggs over a period of fifteen days. When it has laid the eggs, the male follows along and blows his ink over them, and they become firm. They move about in pairs; the male is more mottled than the female and darker on the back. The octopus mates in winter and breeds in spring, when it also dens up for about two months. It lays its egg like a little curl, resembling the fruit of the white poplar. The creature is very prolific, for from what is laid an unlimited quantity results. The male differs from the female in having a more elongated head, and in having what fishermen call the "genital" in its tentacle white. It broods over the eggs once it has laid them; for this reason octopuses are then in their worst condition, since they do not feed during this time. The purple-shellfish also breed around spring, and the whelks as winter ends. And in general the shelled creatures appear in spring having what are called eggs, and in autumn too, except for the edible sea-urchins; these have them mostly in these seasons, but in fact they have them at all times, and especially at the full moon and on warm days, except for those in the strait of the Pyrrhaeans; those are better in winter. They are small, but full of eggs. Snails too all appear pregnant, similarly, at the same season.
21| Of birds, the wild ones, as has been said, mate once and for the most part breed only once, but the swallow breeds twice, and so does the blackbird. Now the blackbird's first brood is destroyed by the winter cold (for it breeds earliest of all birds), but it rears the later brood to completion. Those that are tame, or can be tamed, breed more often — for example doves throughout the whole summer, and the tribe of hens; for the male fowls mate and the female fowls are mated and they lay continually, except on the turning days of winter. Of the pigeon kind there happen to be several sorts, for the dove and the wood-pigeon are different. The wood-pigeon is smaller, but the dove becomes tamer; the wood-pigeon is black and small and red-footed and rough-footed, and for this reason no one keeps it. The largest of these is the ring-dove, and second the stock-dove; this is a little bigger than the dove; the smallest of these is the turtle-dove. Doves breed at every season and rear their young, if they have a warm place and the necessities; if not, only in summer. The young of spring and of autumn are the best; those of summer and on hot days are the worst.
22| Animals also differ in age with respect to mating. First, then, the semen does not begin to be secreted, nor is the animal able to breed, at the same time as most other things happen to it, but later: for in all animals the young are at first infertile, and even once fertile their offspring are weaker and fewer. This is most evident in humans, in the live-bearing quadrupeds, and in birds; for in the former the offspring are fewer, in the latter the eggs are fewer. The ages at which they mate come, relative to each species itself, at roughly the same time for most kinds, unless something makes it earlier because of some monstrous affection or because of damage to their nature. In humans, then, the sign is given by the change of voice and by the genitals, not only in size but also in form, and likewise by the breasts, and especially by the growth of hair at puberty. The semen begins to be produced at about fourteen years, and the capacity to beget at about twenty-one. In the other animals puberty does not occur in the same way (for some have no hair at all, others have none on the underside, or less than on the upper side), but the change of voice is noticeable in some;
23| but in others other parts of the body give the sign both that they have begun to have semen and that it is now fertile. The voice, in general, is higher-pitched in the female in most cases, and in the younger than in the older, since even in deer the males call with a deeper voice than the females. The males call when the season of mating is at hand, the females when they are frightened. The female's call is short, while the male's has length. And in dogs too, as they grow old, the voice becomes deeper. In horses too the voices differ: as soon as they are born, the females emit a voice that is thin and small, while the males emit one that is small too, but greater and deeper than the female's; as time goes on it grows greater; and once a horse becomes two years old and begins to mate, the male emits a voice that is large and deep, while the female's is greater and clearer than before, up to about twenty years for the most part; but after this time both males and females emit a weaker voice. So then, for the most part, as we have said, the voice of males differs from that of females in that the males call more deeply than the females, in those animals whose voice has some range or extension;
24| not, however, in all animals, but in some the opposite holds, as in cattle; for among these the female calls more deeply than the male, and the calves more deeply than the full-grown. For this reason animals that are castrated change their voices in the opposite direction; for castrated animals change toward the female voice. The times of mating according to age stand as follows for the various animals. The sheep and the goat mate and conceive in their first year, the goat more so; and the males too mate at the same age. But the offspring of the males differ in these and in the other animals; for the males produce better offspring in a later year, once they have grown older. The pig mates and is mated first at eight months, and the female produces young at a year old (for this is how the time of gestation works out), while the male begets at eight months, though the offspring are poor before he is a year old. But it is not everywhere, as has been said, that the ages fall out in the same way; for in some places the sows are mated and mate at four months, so as to bear and rear young at six months, while in other places the boars begin to mate at ten months, and are good for it up to three years. The dog for the most part is mated at a year old and mates at a year old, but sometimes this happens even at eight months;
25| and this happens more with males than with females. The bitch is pregnant for sixty-one, or even sixty-two or sixty-three days at the longest; she carries for no less than sixty days, but if a litter is born before that, it is not reared to completion. Once she has given birth, she is mated again in the sixth month, and not before. The horse begins to mate and to be mated at two years old, so as also to beget; the offspring produced at these ages, however, are smaller and weaker. For the most part it mates and is mated at three years old. And it goes on improving, producing ever better offspring, up to twenty years. The stallion mates up to thirty-three years old, the mare is mated up to forty years old, so that mating turns out to occur for practically the whole of life; for the male lives for the most part about thirty-five years, the female more than forty; indeed a horse has already lived to seventy-five years. The donkey mates and is mated at thirty months. However, they do not for the most part beget until three years old, or two and a half. Indeed one has already conceived at a year old, so as even to rear its young.
26| Even a cow one year old has given birth, so that it went on to be raised; and it grew to the size it was going to reach, and no further. The starting points of generation for these animals, then, work in this way. A man's power of begetting lasts, at the outside, until seventy years of age, a woman's until fifty. But this is rare; for children are born to few people at these ages; for the most part the limit is sixty-five for men and forty-five for women. A ewe bears young until it is eight years old, or, if well tended, even until eleven; and it happens that for practically their whole life both sexes go on covering and being covered. Billy-goats that are fat are less fertile (which is why, when vines fail to bear, people call them "goating"), but when made lean they are able to beget by covering. Rams cover the oldest ewes first, and do not pursue the young ones. As has been said earlier, young ewes bear fewer offspring than older ones. A boar is good for covering up to three years old, but the offspring of older boars are inferior; for he no longer gains in growth or in strength. A boar is accustomed to cover after being fed up, and not after having covered another sow first;
27| otherwise the covering is shorter and the offspring smaller. A sow bears the fewest young when she is bearing for the first time; she is at her best bearing for the second time; as she grows old she still bears in the same way, but is covered more slowly; and when sows are fifteen years old, they no longer breed but become barren with age. If a sow is well fed, she comes to be covered more quickly, both when young and when growing old; and if, while pregnant, she is fattened up excessively, she has less milk after giving birth. As regards age, the offspring are best when the mother is in her prime; as regards seasons, those born at the beginning of winter are best; those born in summer are worst, for they are small and thin and moist. The male, if well fed, is able to cover at any season, both by day and by night; if not, he covers chiefly in the early morning; and as he grows old he is able to less and less, as has also been said before. Often males that are unable, either through age or through weakness, to mount quickly, when the female lies down because she is tired of standing, lie down together with her and unite with her that way. A sow conceives most readily when, in heat, she drops her ears; if not, she comes into heat again. Bitches are covered not throughout their whole life but only up to a certain prime;
28| for the most part their coverings and their pregnancies occur up to twelve years of age; nevertheless it has happened already, in some cases, that females as old as eighteen or twenty years have been covered and males of that age have begotten. Old age takes this away too, so that they neither beget nor bear, just as with the other animals. The camel is an animal that urinates backward, and is covered in the way described earlier; the season of covering, in Arabia, falls in the month Maimakterion. She is pregnant for twelve months and bears one young; for she is a bearer of a single offspring. The female begins covering at three years old, and the male at three years old as well; after giving birth the female is covered again only after letting one year pass. The elephant, in its youngest case, begins to be mounted at ten years old, and at its oldest at fifteen; the male mounts at five or six years old. The season of covering is spring. After covering he mounts again in the third year following; and whichever female he has made pregnant, he does not touch again. She is pregnant for two years and bears one young; for she is a bearer of a single offspring; and the embryo, when it is born, is the size of a calf two or three months old.
29| This, then, is how matters stand regarding the covering of animals that are covered. We must now speak of the generation both of animals that are covered and of those not covered, and first of the shelled animals (the testacea); for this whole class is, so to speak, the only one that is not covered at all. Purple-fish, in spring, gather together into one place and produce what is called the honeycomb. This is like a honeycomb, except not so neatly formed, but rather as if many white shells of chickpeas had been packed together. None of these has any open passage, nor do the purple-fish come to be out of them; rather, both these creatures and the other testacea grow out of mud and putrefaction. This substance occurs as a kind of discharge in both purple-fish and whelks, for whelks too produce honeycombs. The testacea that produce honeycombs come to be in the same way as the other testacea, but more so when creatures of the same kind already exist beforehand. For when they begin producing the honeycomb they discharge a slimy stickiness, out of which the shell-like parts are formed. All this then dissolves away, and what it contained is discharged into the earth; and at that spot small purple-fish form and take shape in the earth, and the purple-fish are caught while attached to these, though some of them have not yet had their shape fully worked out. If they are caught before giving birth, sometimes, in the fish-baskets, they do not lay their eggs at random but gather into one place, just as they do in the sea, and because of the cramped space they form what looks like a bunch of grapes.
30| There are several kinds of purple-fish: some are large, such as those around Sigeum and Lectum, others small, such as those in the Euripus and around Caria; and those in gulfs are large and rough-shelled, and as for their bloom, most of them have a black one, though some have a small red one; some of the large ones grow to as much as a mina in weight. Those along beaches and around headlands are small in size but have a red bloom. Further, in the northern regions they are black, in the southern regions red, for the most part. They are caught in spring, when they are making their honeycombs; under the Dog Star they are not caught, for they do not feed then but hide themselves away and lie up. They have their bloom midway between the "poppy-head" and the neck; the joining of these parts is dense, and its color to look at is like a white membrane, which is removed; when squeezed it dyes and colors the hand. A kind of vein runs through it; this is thought to be the bloom. The rest of its substance is like alum. When the purple-fish are producing their honeycombs, their bloom is then at its worst.
31| The small ones, then, they crush shell and all, since it is not easy to remove the bloom separately; but with the larger ones they strip off the shell and remove the bloom. This is why the neck and the "poppy-head" become separated: the bloom lies between these two parts, above what is called the belly; so once it is removed the parts must necessarily be divided. They take care to crush them while alive; for if the creature dies first, it vomits up the bloom along with itself; this is also why they keep them in weel-baskets until they have gathered enough and have leisure to deal with them. The ancients used not to let the weel-baskets down close to the bait, nor did they fasten them, with the result that a basket already hauled up would often fall back off; those of today fasten them, so that if it falls, it is not lost. It falls off most readily when it is full; when it is empty it is even hard to pull loose. These, then, are the things peculiar to purple-fish. Whelks come to be in the same way as purple-fish, and at the same season. Both also have their coverings alike, as do the other spiral-shelled creatures, all from birth; they feed by putting out what is called the tongue from under the covering. The purple-fish has a tongue bigger than a finger, with which it feeds and bores through both shellfish and its own shell.
32| The purple-fish and the whelk are both long-lived; the purple-fish lives about six years, and each year's growth is visible in the intervals on the shell of its spiral. Mussels too show this comb-like growth. The so-called lake-oysters first take shape wherever there is mud. Cockles, clams, razor-shells, and scallops form their substance in sandy places. Pinnas grow upright from their byssus in sandy and muddy places. They have within them a pinna-guard — in some cases a small shrimp, in others a small crab — and if deprived of it they perish more quickly. In general all the shelled creatures also arise spontaneously in mud, different kinds according to the different kind of mud: oysters in muddy mud, cockles and the kinds just named in sandy mud, and around the crevices of small rocks, sea-squirts and barnacles and the creatures that live on the surface, such as limpets and nerites. All such creatures grow quickly, but purple-fish and scallops most of all; these reach their full size within a year.
33| In some of the shelled creatures there grow small white crabs, altogether tiny in size — most of all in the tub-mussels, and next in the pinnas, where they are called pinna-guards. They also occur in scallops and in lake-oysters, but these show no noticeable growth. Fishermen say that they come into being together with the creatures they live in. Scallops too disappear into the sand for a time, as do purple-fish. Oysters, then, grow as has been said; and of them, some grow in shallow lagoons, some on beaches, some in spotted rocky places, some in hard and rough places, and some in sandy places. Some change their location, others do not. Among those that do not change location, pinnas are rooted, while razor-shells and cockles remain unrooted; but once they are torn up, they can no longer live. The creature called the starfish is by nature so hot that whatever it seizes, once pulled out, is instantly found to be cooked through. They say it is also the greatest scourge in the strait of the Pyrrhaeans. In shape it resembles the pictures made of it.
34| The so-called sea-lungs also arise spontaneously. The shellfish that painters use greatly exceeds the others in thickness, and its bloom forms on the outside of the shell; such shellfish are found especially in the regions around Caria. The small crab originates at first from earth and mud, then slips into the empty shells, and as it grows moves on again into another, larger shell — for instance that of the nerite or the sea-snail and other such creatures, and often into small whelk-shells. Once it has slipped in, it carries this shell around with it and feeds again within it; and as it grows it again moves on into another, larger one.
35| In the same manner as the shelled creatures, creatures without shells also come into being, such as sea-anemones and sponges, in the crevices of rocks. There are two kinds of sea-anemone: those in hollows do not detach from the rocks, while those on smooth, flat rocks detach and move to other places. Limpets too detach and move about. In the chambers of sponges, pinna-guards occur. Over the chambers there lies something like a spider's web, which they open and close to catch small fish — opening it so the fish will enter, and closing it once they have entered. There are three kinds of sponge: the loose-textured, the dense, and a third which they call the Achillean, the finest, densest, and strongest of all; this they place under helmets and greaves, and a blow rings out less loudly against it. This kind is the rarest. Among the dense kind, those that are extremely hard and rough are called goat-sponges. All sponges grow either on rock or in the shingle, and they feed on the mud. Here is the sign of it: when they are taken up, they are found full of mud, which also happens with the other creatures that grow attached to something, their nourishment coming from the point of attachment.
36| The dense sponges are weaker than the loose ones, because their point of attachment covers a smaller area. They also have perception, as people say. Here is the sign of it: if a sponge perceives that someone is about to tear it away, it contracts itself, and it is then hard to pull off. It does this same thing also when there is much wind and surf, so as not to be torn loose. There are some who dispute this, such as the people of Torone. The sponge nourishes creatures within itself — worms and certain others — which, once the sponge has been torn away, eat the small rock-fish, and also the roots that are left behind; and if the sponge is broken off, it grows again from what remains and is restored to fullness. The loose-textured sponges grow largest, and are most numerous around Lycia; the dense ones are softest, for the Achillean sponges are firmer than these. In general, the sponges that grow in deep, calm waters are softest; for wind and storm harden them, just as they harden other growing things, and take away their growth. That is why the sponges in the Hellespont are rough and dense, and in general those beyond Cape Malea and those within it differ in softness and hardness. But there must also not be too much warmth, for then they rot, just like growing things do.
37| That is why the finest sponges are those near the coast, if the water there is deep close in; for on account of the depth they are well tempered against both extremes. While still unwashed and alive, they appear black to look at. Their attachment is neither at one single point nor over the whole surface, for between the points of attachment there are empty passages. A membrane-like covering is stretched around the lower parts, and the attachment occurs at several points. On the upper side the other passages are closed off, but four or five are visible; hence some say it is through these that the sponge takes in its nourishment. There is another kind, which they call the unwashable, because it cannot be washed clean. This kind has large passages, but the rest of it is entirely dense; when cut through it is denser and more glutinous than the sponge, and altogether lung-like. It is agreed by everyone, more than for any other kind, that this one has perception and is long-lived. In the sea they are distinguished from sponges in that sponges turn white once the mud has settled on them, while these remain always black. This, then, is how matters stand concerning sponges and the origin of the shelled creatures.
38| Among the crustaceans, spiny lobsters, after mating, carry their eggs for about three months — Skirophorion, Hekatombaion, and Metageitnion; after this they lay them beneath the belly into the folds there, and their eggs grow just as grubs do. The same thing is true also of the cephalopods and of those fish that lay eggs, for in all of them the egg grows. The egg-mass of the spiny lobster becomes crumbly, divided into eight parts. For under each of the flaps that grow out from the side there is something cartilage-like which the eggs grow around, and the whole becomes like a bunch of grapes, since each of the cartilage-like parts splits into several. These become visible if one pulls them apart, but to someone simply looking they appear to be a single solid mass. The largest eggs are not those near the opening but those in the middle, and the smallest are those at the ends. The small eggs are the size of a millet seed. They are not attached directly at the opening but at the middle, for on each side they lie about two intervals away from the tail and from the thorax, since that is also how the flaps naturally grow. Now the flaps growing from the side alone cannot enclose them all, but once the tail-tip is laid over them it covers everything, and this becomes for them a kind of lid.
39| It seems that as they lay their eggs, they bring them up against the cartilaginous parts as the breadth of the tail unfolds, and pressing them close and being bent they lay them at once. The cartilaginous parts grow at these times and become receptive of the eggs; for they lay against the cartilaginous parts, just as cuttlefish lay against twigs and rubbish. So they lay in this manner, and having concocted the eggs there, within about twenty days they discharge them compacted and in a mass, as is also plain from outside; then from these the crawfish are produced within about fifteen days, and are often caught smaller than a finger's length. So they lay before Arcturus rises, and after Arcturus discharge the eggs. In the case of the humpbacked shrimp, gestation is about four months. Crawfish occur in rough, rocky places, lobsters in smooth ones; in muddy places neither occurs; hence in the Hellespont and around Thasos lobsters occur, but around Sigeum and Athos, crawfish. Fishermen mark out the rough places and the muddy ones by the headlands and other such signs, whenever they wish to fish out on the open sea.
40| They keep closer to land in winter and in spring, but in summer out on the open sea, pursuing now the warmth, now the cold. At about the same times the creatures called 'bears' also give birth, like the crawfish; hence in winter, and before giving birth, in spring, they are at their best, but once they have given birth, at their worst. They shed their shell in spring, just as snakes shed what is called their old skin, and this happens both crawfish and crabs do, right after being born and again later. Crawfish are all long-lived.
41| Cephalopods, from mating and copulation, produce a white egg; this becomes brittle over time, like the eggs of the hard-shelled creatures. And the octopus lays its eggs into its lair, or into a jar, or into some other hollow thing, resembling the tendrils of the vine-blossom or the fruit of the white poplar, as has been said before. The eggs hang around the lair once it has laid them. Their number is so great that, once removed, they fill a vessel much bigger than the head in which the creature holds them. Now the eggs of octopuses turn into little octopuses after about fifty days, and these creep out, like spiders, in great numbers; the nature of their individual parts is not yet distinct in them, but the whole shape is already evident. Because of their smallness and weakness, most of them perish. Indeed some have been seen so extremely small that they are unarticulated, yet move when touched. Cuttlefish lay eggs that come out resembling large black myrtle-berries; and they cling to one another, the whole mass being like a bunch of grapes, entwined about a single stem, and not easily pulled apart from one another. For the male discharges a certain mucous fluid, and this supplies the stickiness.
42| The eggs grow in this way, and at first are white, but once the creature lets go the ink, they become both bigger and black. When the little cuttlefish is formed, having formed entirely out of the white part on the inside, it comes out once this bursts around it. It comes about like this: if the female first discharges something like hail, then out of this the little cuttlefish grows, head downward, just as birds are attached at the belly. What sort of thing the navel-like attachment is has not yet been observed, except that, as the little cuttlefish grows, the white part is always becoming less, and in the end, just as the yolk does with birds, so here the white part disappears. In these creatures, as in the others, the eyes appear largest first. The egg is marked A, the eyes B and Γ, the little cuttlefish itself Δ. It is pregnant in spring, and lays within fifteen days; and once it has laid the eggs, in another fifteen days they become, as it were, the berries of a bunch of grapes, and when these burst the little cuttlefish slip out from inside. And if one splits them open earlier, once they are already fully formed, the little cuttlefish discharge excrement, and their color changes, turning redder instead of white, out of fear. Now the crustaceans place their eggs under themselves and brood over them, but the octopus and the cuttlefish and other such creatures, once they have laid, keep watch wherever their broods are — the cuttlefish especially;
43| for its body often shows above the water near the land. The female octopus sometimes sits over the eggs, sometimes stations itself at the mouth of the lair, holding out its tentacle. The cuttlefish lays toward the land, around seaweed and reed-like growths, and if anything of that sort has been cast up — brushwood, twigs, or stones; and fishermen even place twigs there on purpose — and against these it lays a long, continuous string of eggs, like a string of curls. It lays and discharges the eggs by a kind of retching, as though the discharge came with effort. Squid lay out on the open sea; their egg, like the cuttlefish's, comes out continuous. Both the squid and the cuttlefish are short-lived; for they do not live two years, except a few of them; and the octopuses likewise. From one egg comes one little cuttlefish; and it is the same with squid. The male squid differs from the female; for the female, if one parts the mantle and looks inside, has two red things like breasts, but the male does not have them. The cuttlefish shows this same difference, and also that the male is more variegated than the female, as has been said before.
44| That the males of insects are smaller than the females and mount from above, and how they perform copulation, and that they are separated only with difficulty, has been said before; and once they have mated, most of those that mate produce their offspring quickly. All of them bring forth grubs, except one kind of butterfly; these produce something hard, like the seed of safflower, with fluid inside it. From the grubs the animal is not formed out of some one part, as it is from eggs, but the whole grows and, becoming articulated, turns into the animal. Some of them come from kindred animals — for instance spiders and their young from spiders and their webs, and locusts, grasshoppers, and cicadas from their own kind; others come not from animals but spontaneously — some from the dew that settles on leaves, naturally in spring, but often in winter too, whenever there is fine weather and south winds for a longer stretch of time; others in mud and dung as these rot; others in wood, some in the wood of living plants, others in wood already dried out; others in the hair of animals; others in the flesh of animals; others in excrement — and of these, some in excrement already discharged, others while still inside the animals, such as the creatures called worms.
45| There are three kinds of these: the one called the flat kind, the round ones, and third the threadworms. From these nothing else is produced; the flat kind alone attaches itself to the intestine and discharges something like cucumber seed, and by this sign physicians recognize those who have it. The creatures called 'psychai' come from caterpillars, which occur on green leaves, especially on the cabbage plant — which some call kale — first smaller than a millet seed, then small grubs as they grow, then within three days small caterpillars; after this, once grown, they become motionless and change their shape, and are called chrysalides, and have a hard shell, though they move when touched. They attach themselves by spider-web-like threads, having neither a mouth nor any other part that can be made out. After not much time has passed, the shell bursts open, and out of them fly winged creatures, which we call 'psychai'. Now at first, while they are caterpillars, they feed and discharge waste matter; but once they become chrysalides, they neither taste anything nor discharge any waste. And it is the same way with all the other creatures that come from grubs, both those that come from the mating of animals and those that come about without copulation.
46| For also the grubs of bees, hornets, and wasps, when they are young, are nourished and are seen to have excrement; but when they pass from the grub stage to the shaped form, they are then called nymphs, and they no longer take food nor have excrement any longer, but shut in they lie motionless until they grow; then they come out, breaking through the part where the cell has been left. The 'hypera' and the 'penia' also come to be from certain other such creatures, which arch themselves in their movement and, advancing, bend and mount upon the other part; each of the creatures that come to be takes its own proper color from the caterpillar. From a certain large grub, which has something like horns and differs from the others, there comes to be, first, when the grub changes, a caterpillar, then a chrysalis, and from this a cocoon; and in six months it passes through all these forms. From this creature, too, some women unwind the silk cocoons, reeling them off, and then weave them; and it is said that the first to weave in Cos was Pamphile, daughter of Plateus. From the grubs that are in dry wood the stag-beetles come to be in the same way: first the grubs become motionless, then, when the shell is broken all around, the stag-beetles come out.
47| From the stag-beetles come the leek-shearers; these too have wings. From the broad little creatures that run about on the surface of rivers the gadflies come to be; that is why most of them occur around waters, where such creatures are found. From certain small, black, hairy caterpillars there first come glow-worms, not the flying kind; these in turn change, and winged creatures come to be from them, called curl-flies. Gnats come to be from maggots. The maggots occur in the mud of wells, and wherever there is a confluence of water that has an earthy sediment. At first the mud itself, putrefying, takes on a white color, then black, and finally blood-red; and when it has become so, there grows out of it something like tiny red seaweed; these for a time move while still attached, then, breaking off, are carried along through the water, the things called maggots. After a few days they stand upright on the water, motionless and hard, and then, when the shell is broken all around, the gnat sits on top, until sun or wind stirs it; then at last it flies. For all the other grubs too, and the creatures that break out from grubs, the beginning of their coming-to-be is due to sun or wind.
48| Maggots occur more, and more quickly, in places that have every sort of sediment, as happens at Megara and in workshops; for such matter putrefies more quickly. And they occur more in autumn, for then the moisture happens to be less. Cockchafer-grubs come to be from couch-grass, and cockchafers from the grubs that live in cow-dung and in donkey-dung. Dung-beetles, in the dung-ball they roll, both hibernate through the winter and lay little grubs in it, from which dung-beetles come to be. Winged creatures also come to be, in the same way as those mentioned, from the grubs in pulse. Flies come from the grubs in dung that has been set apart in separate heaps; that is why those engaged in this work make a point of separating out the rest that is mixed in, and say that only then has the dung been properly worked. The beginning of the little grubs is small; for here too, first there is a reddening, and out of motionlessness it takes on movement as though it had just grown there; then it turns out to be a motionless little grub; then, having moved, it later becomes motionless again; and from this a fly is finally produced, and it moves once wind or sun occurs. Horse-flies come to be from wood.
49| Cabbage-worms come from little grubs that change; these little grubs occur in the stalks of cabbage. Blister-beetles come from the caterpillars found on fig trees, pear trees, and pine trees (for grubs occur on all of these) and from those on the dog-rose; and they are drawn toward foul-smelling things because they have come to be from such matter. Gnats come from grubs that arise from the sediment around vinegar; for indeed creatures come to be even in things that seem to be most resistant to putrefaction, as in old snow. Old snow becomes redder, which is why the grubs in it are of that color too, and hairy; those from the snow in Media are large and white; all of them, however, move with difficulty. In Cyprus, where copper ore is smelted, when it is thrown in over many days, creatures come to be there in the fire, a little larger than large flies, winged, which leap and walk through the fire. Both these creatures and the grubs die when separated, the one kind from the fire, the other from the snow. That it is possible for certain constitutions of creatures not to be burned, the salamander makes clear; for this creature, as they say, walking through fire, puts the fire out.
50| Around the river Hypanis, near the Cimmerian Bosporus, at the summer solstice, the river carries down what look like little sacs larger than grapes, out of which, when they burst, there comes a winged, four-footed creature; it lives and flies until late afternoon, but as the sun goes down it withers away, and as soon as the sun sets it dies, having lived a single day, which is why it is called the ephemeron. Most of the creatures that come to be from caterpillars and grubs are at first enclosed in spider-webs. This, then, is the manner in which these creatures come to be.
51| The wasps called ichneumons (they are smaller than the other kind) kill spiders, carry them to a wall or something of the sort that has a hole in it, seal them in with mud, and lay their eggs there, and from these the ichneumon wasps come to be. Some of the small, nameless beetle-like creatures also make small holes of mud, either near tombs or walls, and lay their little grubs there. The time of their coming-to-be, from beginning to end, is measured for most of them in periods of seven days, either three or four such periods. For most grubs and grub-like creatures there are three periods of seven days; for those that lay eggs, generally four. Of these, the formation occurs, from mating, within the first seven days, and in the remaining three periods those that are produced by generation, such as by a spider or some other such creature, sit on and hatch their eggs. The changes occur for most of them at three-day or four-day intervals, just as the crises of diseases also occur. This, then, is the manner of coming-to-be of insects; they perish as their parts shrivel, just as the larger animals do from old age; and the winged kinds perish also as their wings shrink together around autumn; horse-flies perish also as their eyes become waterlogged.
52| As for the generation of bees, not everyone supposes it happens in the same way. Some say that bees neither lay eggs nor mate, but bring in their offspring, and some say they bring it from the flower of the reed-blossom, others from the flower of the reed, others again from the flower of the olive; and they cite as a sign that when there is a good crop of olives, then the most swarms are sent out. Others say that they bring the offspring of the drones from some such material as has been mentioned, but that the bees themselves are borne by the leaders. Of the leaders there are two kinds: the better one is reddish, the other is black and more variegated, and in size it is twice that of a good worker-bee; and the part below the waist-band is about half again as long, and by some they are called mothers, as being the ones that give birth. As a sign of this they say that the brood of drones comes to be even when no leader is present, but that of the bees does not. Others say that bees do mate, and that the drones are male and the bees female. Now for the others generation takes place in the hollows of the comb, but the leaders come to be below, near the comb, hanging apart by themselves, six or seven of them, formed the opposite way from the rest of the brood. Worker-bees have a sting, but the drones do not; the kings, or leaders, have a sting but do not strike with it, which is why some people think they do not have one.
53| There are kinds of bees: the best is small, round, and mottled; another is long, resembling the hornet; a third is the one called the thief (this one is black and broad-bellied); a fourth is the drone, largest of all in size, but stingless and sluggish. That is why some people weave barriers around the hives so that the bees can pass in but the drones cannot, because they are bigger. There are two kinds of leaders, as has also been said before. In each hive there are several leaders, and not just one; the hive is destroyed both if there are not enough capable leaders present (not so much because they are leaderless, but, as people say, because the leaders contribute to the generation of the bees) and if there are too many leaders, since they tear the hive apart. So when spring comes late, and when there are droughts and blight, less brood results; but in a drought they produce more honey, while in wet weather more brood, which is why a good crop of olives and swarming happen at the same time. They make the comb first, then deposit the brood into it — according to some, from the mouth, namely those who say the bees bring the brood in from elsewhere — and then in this way the honey, as food, some for summer use and some for autumn.
54| Autumn honey is the better kind. The comb comes from flowers, and they bring the wax-forming material from the resin of trees, while the honey is what falls from the air, especially at the risings of the stars, and when the rainbow comes down; in general no honey is produced before the rising of the Pleiades. So the bee makes the wax, as has been said, from the flowers; but that it does not make the honey but brings in what falls, there is a sign: beekeepers find the hives full of honey within one or two days. Moreover, in autumn flowers appear but no honey, once the earlier honey has been taken away. So once the honey already produced has been removed, and food is either no longer present or scarce, more honey would be produced then, if indeed they made it from the flowers. Honey forms by being concocted: at the start it is like water, and for some days it is liquid (which is why, if it is removed within those days, it has no thickness), and it sets, at the most, within twenty days. This is evident at once from its taste: it differs in sweetness and in thickness. The bee gathers from all plants that flower within a calyx, and also from other things that have sweetness, damaging no fruit in the process.
55| and takes up their juices with the organ like a tongue, and carries them off. The hives are harvested when the wild fig appears; and bees produce the best combs when they are making honey. They carry wax and bee-bread on their legs, but they disgorge the honey into the cell. When they have deposited the brood, they brood over it like a bird. In the comb the little grub, while still small, lies on its side; later it raises itself up on its own and feeds, and it holds fast to the comb so as to be attached to it. The brood of the bees and of the drones is white, and grubs come from it; as they grow they become bees and drones. But the brood of the kings is reddish-yellow in color, and in consistency is like thick honey; and it has, right from the start, a bulk close to that of the creature that comes from it. No grub forms from this beforehand; rather the bee comes straight away, as they say. When the bee lays brood in the comb, honey forms in the cell directly opposite. The grub grows feet and wings once it has been left alone; and when it reaches completion, it bursts the membrane around it and flies out. It excretes waste as long as it is a grub, but no longer afterward, except if it fails to come out in time, as was said before.
56| If someone removes the heads of the grubs before they have wings, the bees eat them out; and if someone nips off a drone's wing and lets it go, the bees themselves eat off the wings of the rest. The life span of bees is six years; some live seven. If a hive lasts nine or ten years, it is considered to have done well. In the Pontus there are some very white bees, which make honey twice a month. Those in Themiscyra, around the river Thermodon, make combs in the ground and in the hives that do not have much wax but very little, though the honey is thick; and the comb is smooth and even. They do not do this always, but in winter; for ivy is abundant in that region and flowers at that season, and it is from this that they gather the honey. Honey is also brought down to Amisus from higher up, white and very thick, which the bees make without combs, on the trees; and such honey is produced elsewhere in the Pontus too. There are also bees that make triple combs in the ground; these contain honey but no grubs.
57| But not all combs are of this kind, nor do all bees make combs like this. Hornets and wasps make combs for their brood: when they have no leader but have wandered off and cannot find one, hornets build up in some high place, wasps in holes; but when they have a leader, they build underground. So all their combs are six-sided, just like those of the bees, but the comb is composed not of wax but of bark-like and cobweb-like material; the hornets' comb is far more finely worked than the wasps' comb. They deposit brood, like the bees, about a drop's worth, into the side of the cell, and it clings to the wall. Brood is not present in all the cells at the same time; rather in some there are already creatures large enough even to fly, in others pupae, and in others still grubs. Excrement occurs only around the grubs, just as with the bees too. And as long as they are pupae, they remain motionless, and the cell is sealed over. Directly opposite the brood in the cell, about a drop's worth of honey forms, in the hornets' combs. Their broods form not in spring but in autumn; and they show their growth most noticeably at the full moons. Both the brood and the grubs are attached not from below the cell, but from the sides.
58| Some of the bombykia build against a rock or something of that kind a sharp structure of clay, the way salt deposits are left behind; this is extremely thick and hard, so that men can barely cut through it with a spear-point. There they lay their eggs, and white grubs form inside a black membrane. Apart from the membrane, wax forms in the clay; and this wax is far paler than that of bees. Ants too mate, and lay grubs, which are not attached to anything; as these grow, from being small and round at first they become elongated and jointed. Their generation occurs in spring. Land scorpions too lay many egg-shaped grubs, and brood over them. When the young are fully formed, they are cast out, as with spiders, and the mother is destroyed by her offspring; for they are often about eleven in number.
59| Spiders all mate in the manner described, and they first produce small grub-like creatures; for these become spiders as wholes changing all together, not part by part, since at the start they are round. When the spider has laid, she broods over them, and within three days they take on articulated form. All spiders lay within a web, but some within a fine, small one, others within a thick one, and some enclose the eggs wholly within a round pouch, while others are only partly enclosed by the web. The webs are not all made at the same time; the spider springs up at once and lets out a thread. The fluid found when the grubs are squeezed is the same as when they are still young, thick and white. Meadow spiders lay their eggs beforehand into a web, half of which is close to them and half projecting outward, and it is in this outer part that they brood and bring the young to life. Tarantula spiders lay into a thick woven basket, on which they brood. The neat, smooth-bodied spiders lay a smaller number, while tarantulas lay a great number; and once these have grown they surround their mother in a circle and, throwing her out, kill her, and often the male too, if they catch him, since he broods along with the female. Sometimes there come to be as many as three hundred young around a single tarantula. Spiders reach their full growth from small beginnings in about twenty-eight days.
60| Locusts mate in the same manner as the other insects, the smaller mounting the larger (for the male is the smaller), and they lay by driving into the ground the stalk-like organ near the tail, which the males do not have. They lay in clusters and in the same spot, so that the result is something like a honeycomb. Then, once they have laid, egg-shaped grubs form there, enclosed by a certain fine earth like a membrane, and out of this they are brought to maturity. The embryos are so soft at this stage that if one touches them they are crushed together. These are not on the surface but a little below the ground. When they have been matured, small black locusts creep out from the earthy covering that enclosed them; then their skin splits all around them, and at once they become larger. They lay as summer is ending, and having laid, they die; for at the same time as they lay, grubs form about their necks. The males also die around the same time. They creep out of the ground in spring. Locusts do not occur in mountainous country nor in barren country, but in flat, fissured ground; for it is in the fissures that they lay. The eggs remain in the ground through the winter, and with summer locusts arise from the previous year's embryos.
61| In the same way the migratory locusts also lay, and having laid they die. Their eggs are destroyed by the autumn rains when these are heavy; but if a drought occurs, then the migratory locusts become more numerous, because they are not destroyed in the same way, since their destruction seems to happen in no fixed order, occurring however chance has it.
62| Of cicadas there are two kinds: the small ones, which appear first and die out last, and the large ones, the singers, which appear later and die out earlier. Likewise among both the small and the large, some have the midriff divided — these are the singers — and some have it undivided — these do not sing. Some call the large singing ones "harvest-flies," and the small ones "little cicadas"; and among these too, the ones with the divided midriff sing a little. Cicadas do not occur where there are no trees; hence at Cyrene none occur on the plain, but many around the city, especially where there are olive trees, for these do not cast a deep shade. Cicadas do not occur in cold places, and so not in densely shaded groves either. The large mate with each other and the small with each other in the same way, coupling on their backs facing one another; the male discharges into the female, as with the other insects too. The female also has a cleft genital organ; she is the one into which the male discharges. They lay in untilled ground, boring with the sharp organ they have behind, just as the migratory locusts also do; for these too lay in untilled ground, which is why many occur in the territory of Cyrene.
63| They also lay into the reeds on which vines are trained, boring through the reeds, and into the stalks of squill. These embryos trickle down into the ground. Many occur when there has been heavy rain. The grub, having grown in the ground, becomes what is called a cicada-grub; and these are at their sweetest at this stage, before the shell splits open around them. When the season arrives, around the solstice, they come out at night, and at once the shell breaks and cicadas emerge from the cicada-grub; they at once become black and harder and larger, and they sing. In both kinds the singers are the males, and the others are the females. At first the males are more pleasant to eat, but after mating the females are, for they then hold white eggs. When flying up after someone has startled them, they discharge a fluid like water, which farmers say shows that they urinate and have residue and are nourished by dew. If someone approaches moving a finger toward them from the tip, bending and then extending it again, they hold their place better than if one simply extends it straight off, and they climb onto the finger; for since they see dimly, they climb on as though onto a moving leaf.
64| Among insects, those that are not flesh-eating but live on the juices of living flesh, such as lice, fleas, and bugs, all produce from mating what are called nits, and from these nothing else is born in turn. Of these creatures, fleas arise from a very small amount of decaying matter (for wherever dry dung collects, there they form), bugs arise from the moisture that collects outside animals' bodies, and lice arise from the flesh itself. They form, when they are about to appear, as small pimples without pus; if one pricks these, lice come out. This happens to some people as a disease, when there is a great deal of moisture in the body; and some have actually died in this way, as they say happened to Alcman the poet and to Pherecydes of Syros. A great abundance of lice also occurs in certain diseases. There is a kind of lice called wild, harder than those that occur on most people; these are also hard to remove from the skin. In children the head becomes lousy, less so in men. Women too become more lousy than men.
65| Those in whose heads lice occur suffer less from headaches. Lice also occur in many of the other animals. Birds have them, and the birds called pheasants, if they do not dust themselves, are destroyed by lice. So too with the other creatures that have feathers, both those with a quilled shaft and those with hairs. Only the donkey has neither lice nor ticks. Cattle have both; sheep and goats have ticks but not lice; and pigs have large, hard lice. In dogs occur what are called dog-fleas. All lice arise in the very animals on which they are found. Lice occur more when there is a change in the water in which the animals bathe, in the case of those bathing creatures that have lice. In the sea, lice occur on fish, but these do not arise from the fish themselves but from the mud; in appearance they resemble the many-footed donkeys of the sea, except that they have a flat tail. There is one species of sea-lice, and they occur everywhere, but especially around red mullets. All these creatures are many-footed and, being insects, are bloodless.
66| The gadfly of the tunny occurs about the fins, and it resembles a scorpion, in size about as large as a spider. In the sea between Cyrene and Egypt there is, about the dolphin, a fish they call the "louse"; it becomes the fattest of all fish because it enjoys abundant food from the dolphin's hunting.
67| Other small creatures are also generated, as was said before, some in wool and in things made of wool, such as the clothes-moths, which grow in wool more when the wool is dusty, and come about most of all if a spider is shut in along with it; for by drinking up whatever moisture is present, it dries the wool out. This grub also occurs in a tunic. It also occurs in wax that is growing old, just as an animal occurs in wood — the creature which is thought to be the smallest of all animals and is called the mite, white and small. In books, too, other creatures are generated, some like those found in cloaks, others like scorpions but without the tail, altogether tiny; and speaking generally this happens in almost everything, both in dry things that are becoming damp and in damp things that are becoming dry, in whatever of them has life in it. There is also a little grub called the wood-destroyer, no less strange than any animal. Its head projects out beyond its casing, mottled in color, and it has feet at the front end, as other grubs do, but the rest of its body is in a spider-web-like tunic, and around this are bits of chaff, so that it looks as though these things had stuck to it as it walks; but they are grown together with the tunic, just as the shell is with the snail — the whole covering is that way with the grub, and it does not fall off but is torn away as though it had grown on.
68| And if one strips off the tunic, the creature dies and becomes useless in the same way as a snail does when its shell is stripped off. As time goes on, this grub too becomes a chrysalis, like the caterpillars, and lives without moving; but what winged creature comes to be out of it has not yet been observed. The wild fig trees among the fig trees have what are called gall-insects. This creature is first a little grub, then, when the skin bursts round about, the gall-insect flies out leaving the skin behind, and makes its way into the wild figs of the cultivated fig trees, and by means of its mouth-parts keeps the wild figs from falling off; this is why farmers hang wild figs on their fig trees, and plant wild fig trees near their fig trees.
69| Among the four-footed, blooded, egg-laying animals, generation occurs in spring, but they do not all mate at the same season; rather some mate in spring, some in summer, some around autumn, according to whichever season suits each of them for the generation of their offspring. Now the tortoise lays eggs with a hard shell and two colors, like those of birds; having laid them, she buries them and beats the ground on top hard; and once she has done this, she comes and broods over them from above; the eggs hatch out in the following year. The freshwater tortoise, coming out of the water, lays after digging a jar-shaped pit, and having laid her eggs in it she leaves them; then after leaving them fewer than thirty days she digs them up and they hatch quickly, and she leads the hatchlings straight to the water. Sea turtles also lay eggs on land, like those of domestic fowl, and after burying them they brood over them by night. They lay a great number of eggs; indeed they lay as many as a hundred. Lizards too lay eggs, and so do crocodiles, both the land kind and the river kind, into the ground. The eggs of lizards hatch of themselves in the ground, for the lizard does not live two years; the lifespan of a lizard is said to be six months. The river crocodile lays many eggs, mostly around sixty, white in color, and she sits on them for sixty days (for she also lives a long time), and from the smallest of eggs the largest of animals comes to be out of these; for the egg is no bigger than a goose's egg, and the hatchling is correspondingly small, but as it grows it comes to be even seventeen cubits long. Some say that it even keeps growing as long as it lives.