History of Animals · Book VIII

Aristotle · a new plain-English translation from the original language

1| Convulsions are apt to seize most children, and more so the better-nourished ones, and those fed on milk that is more abundant or thicker, and by nurses who are well-fleshed. Also harmful with respect to this affliction is dark wine more than white, and wine that is not watered down, and most flatulence-producing foods, and if the bowels become blocked. Most children who die of it die before the seventh day; and this is why names are given at that point, since people already trust more in the child's survival. Children also suffer more at the full moon. It is dangerous, too, when a child's convulsions begin from the back. Book Theta.

2| This, then, is the manner of things concerning the rest of the nature and generation of animals; but their actions and ways of life differ according to their characters and modes of feeding. For in most of the other animals too there are traces of the same dispositions of soul that appear more clearly marked in human beings; for tameness and wildness, gentleness and harshness, courage and cowardice, fearfulness and boldness, spiritedness and cunning, and something resembling intelligence in matters of thought are found, in many of them, as similarities — just as we said in discussing their bodily parts. For some traits differ from those in man only by degree, and man differs from many animals in the same way (for some such traits are present more in man, others more in the other animals), while other traits differ by analogy: for as in man there is craft and wisdom and understanding, so in some animals there is some other natural capacity analogous to these. This is most evident if one looks at the age of children; for in children one can see, as it were, traces and seeds of the states of character they will later have, and the soul at this time of life differs, one might say, not at all from the soul of beasts, so that it is not at all unreasonable that some traits in the other animals are the same as in man, others closely similar, and others analogous.

3| So nature passes by small stages from lifeless things to animals, in such a way that, because of the continuity, the boundary between them and the middle ground belonging to each escapes notice. For after the class of lifeless things comes first the class of plants; and among these one differs from another in seeming to share more or less in life, while the whole class, set against the other bodies, appears more or less as if ensouled, but set against the class of animals appears lifeless. The passage from plants to animals is continuous, as was said before. For with some of the creatures in the sea one might be at a loss whether it is an animal or a plant, since they are attached and grow fast to something, and many of them, when separated, perish; for example the pinnas are attached and grow fast, while the razor-shells, when pulled up, cannot live. And in general the whole class of the hard-shelled creatures is like plants when compared with the animals that move about. And as regards perception, in some of them nothing at all is manifest, in others only faintly. The bodily nature of some of them is fleshy, for example the ones called sea-squirts and the class of the sea-nettles; while the sponge is altogether like the plants. And always, by a small difference at a time, one thing after another already appears to have more life and motion than the last.

4| And in respect of the activities of life the case is the same. For of plants no work is apparent other than, as it were, making another like itself, in the case of all that come to be through seed; and likewise of some animals too, apart from their coming-to-be, one can grasp no other work. This is why such activities are common to all; but once perception is present, their lives already differ in respect of mating, on account of pleasure, and in respect of bearing and rearing their young. Some, then, simply, like plants, complete their proper generation according to the seasons; others also labor over the feeding of their young, and when they have completed this, separate from them and form no further association; while the more intelligent, and those that share more fully in memory, deal with their offspring in a more political way. One part of their life, then, consists in the activities concerned with producing offspring, and another again in those concerned with nourishment; for it is around these two things that all their efforts, and their life, turn out to be. Nourishment differs most of all according to the matter out of which it is constituted; for growth comes to each thing by nature out of this.

5| What accords with nature is pleasant; and all things pursue the pleasure that accords with nature. Animals are divided by their places: some are land animals, others water animals. This difference is spoken of in two ways: some are called land animals or water animals by their taking in air or water; others, which do not take either in, but are naturally suited to a sufficient blending of coolness from each of these, are also called land animals or water animals, though they neither breathe nor take in water, but by making their nourishment and passing their existence in each of these media. For many creatures that take in air, and produce their offspring on land, get their nourishment from watery places and spend most of their time in the water; these alone among animals seem to be of both kinds at once, for one might class them as land animals as well as water animals. Of the creatures that take in the wet element none is a land animal or a winged one, nor does it get its nourishment from the land, though many of the land animals take in air. And some are so constituted that they cannot even live when separated from the nature of water, for example the creatures called sea-turtles, crocodiles, river-horses, seals, and among the smaller animals the freshwater turtles and the class of frogs;

6| for all these are choked if they do not breathe for some interval. And they give birth and rear their young on the dry land, while some live near the dry land but pass their existence in the wet element. Most peculiar of all animals is the dolphin, and whatever else is of that kind among the water creatures and the other whale-like creatures, such as the whale and any others of them that have a blow-hole; for it is not easy to class each of these as simply a water animal or a land animal, if land animals are to be reckoned as those that take in air, and water animals by nature as those that take in water. For the dolphin partakes of both: it takes in and lets out seawater through its blow-hole, and takes in air by its lung. For it has this part, and breathes; and this is why the dolphin, when caught in nets, is quickly choked through not breathing. And out of the water it lives for a long time, moaning and groaning, just like the other animals that breathe; and further, when it sleeps its snout projects above the surface, so that it may breathe. It is absurd to place the same creatures under both divisions, since these are opposed to one another; but it seems that the term 'water animal' still needs further definition. For some take in and let out water for the same reason for which the air-breathers take in air, namely for the sake of cooling, while others do so for the sake of nourishment;

7| for it is necessary that a creature taking its nourishment in a liquid should at the same time take in the liquid itself, and, taking it in, should have an organ by which it will expel it. Now those that use the liquid analogously to breathing have gills, while those of the blooded animals that do so for the sake of nourishment have a blow-hole. Similarly with the soft-bodied creatures and the soft-shelled creatures; for these too take in the liquid for the sake of nourishment. Water animals in the other sense, on account of the blending of their body and their manner of life, are those that take in air but live in the liquid, or those that take in the liquid and have gills, yet make their way onto dry land and take their food there. Only one such creature has so far been observed, the one called the tadpole-newt; for this has no lung but gills, yet is four-footed, as being naturally suited to walk on land as well. In all these creatures nature seems to have been, so to speak, twisted out of its straight course, just as among males some become female-like and among females some become male-like. For animals, taking on a difference in small parts, appear to differ greatly in respect of the nature of the whole body. This is shown in the case of creatures that are castrated; for when a small part is maimed the animal changes over toward the female, so that it is clear that also in the original constitution, if some minute quantity changes in magnitude, provided it is of a governing kind, the one becomes female and the other male, while if it is removed altogether neither sex results.

8| So that both being a land animal and being a water animal hold in both senses, since the change occurring in small parts results in some animals becoming land animals and others water animals. And some do not partake of both, while others do, because of sharing in some degree in the matter, in the constitution of their coming-to-be, out of which they make their nourishment; for what accords with nature is dear to each animal, as has also been said before. Animals having been divided into water animals and land animals in three ways—by taking in air or water, by the blending of their bodies, and thirdly by their nourishment—their modes of life follow along these divisions: some follow the blending and the nourishment together with the taking in of water or air, others follow the blending and the modes of life alone. Now of the hard-shelled animals, those that are motionless are nourished by the fresh water within the sea; for it filters through the dense parts of their shell, since it is thinner than the seawater as it is concocted, just as the creature also receives its original coming-to-be from it. That there is fresh water present in the sea, and that this can be filtered out, is evident; for a test of this has in fact already been made.

9| For if one shapes a thin vessel of wax, ties it round, and lets it down empty into the sea, in a night and a day it takes in a quantity of water, and this appears to be drinkable. Sea anemones feed on whatever little fish falls upon them. Their mouth is in the middle; this is clearest in the case of the large ones. And they have, as oysters do, a passage by which the food is discharged outward. This passage is above; for the sea anemone seems to be, as it were, like the fleshy inner part of oysters turned inside out, and to use the rock as an oyster uses its shell. Limpets too, when they detach themselves, move about and feed. Of the creatures capable of movement, those that eat other animals feed on small fish, as the purple-fish does; for it is carnivorous, and for that reason is also caught by bait of that kind; others feed also on the things that grow in the sea. Sea turtles graze on shellfish (for they have the strongest mouth of all creatures; whatever they seize upon, whether stone or anything else, they bite through and crush), and also, coming out onto land, graze on grass. They often suffer harm and even die when they float on the surface and are dried out by the sun; for they cannot easily get back down again. The crustaceans behave in the same way;

10| for these too eat everything: they feed on stones, mud, seaweed, and dung — for instance the rock-crabs — and they also eat flesh. Crayfish overpower even large fish, and a certain reversal of fortune happens to some of these creatures: octopuses overpower crayfish, so that if the crayfish perceive octopuses nearby in the same net, they die of fright; but crayfish overpower conger eels, since because of their roughness the eels cannot slip free of them; while conger eels devour octopuses, since the octopuses can do nothing against them because of their smoothness. All the cephalopods are carnivorous. Crayfish feed by hunting small fish near their lairs; for in the open sea such creatures occur in places that are rough and rocky, since it is in such places that they also make their lairs. Whatever they seize they bring to their mouth with their two-pronged claw, just as crabs do. By nature a crayfish walks forward, lowering its feelers sideways, when it is unafraid; but when it is frightened it flees backward and shoots itself a long way. They fight one another as rams do with their horns, raising them up and striking;

11| and they are often seen together and in a crowd, like a herd. The crustaceans, then, live in this manner. Among the cephalopods, squid and cuttlefish overpower even large fish. Octopuses feed chiefly by collecting shellfish and pulling out the flesh with these; that is why those who hunt them recognize their lairs by the shells lying there. What some people say — that the octopus eats itself — is false; but some octopuses have had their tentacles eaten away by conger eels. Fish all feed on spawn whenever the season for it comes round, but they do not all take the same other food. Some of them are carnivorous only — for instance the cartilaginous fish, conger eels, sea-bass, tunny, bass, dentex, bonito, sea-perch, and moray eels; but red mullet feed both on seaweed and shellfish and mud, and are also carnivorous; grey mullet feed on mud, the dascyllus on mud and dung, parrotfish and blacktail on seaweed, saupe on dung and seaweed. The saupe also grazes on the plant called leek-weed, and it alone among fish is caught with a bait of gourd. All fish eat one another except the grey mullet; conger eels do this most of all.

12| The grey mullet and the mullet properly so called are the only ones that do not eat flesh at all; the sign of this is that no such thing has ever been found in their stomach when caught, and that fishermen do not use the flesh of animals as bait for them, but barley-cake. Every mullet feeds on seaweed and sand. The grey mullet, which some call the 'tortoise' mullet, keeps near land, while the other kind does not; this open-sea kind grazes on the mucus given off by its own body, which is why it is always fasting. Grey mullets graze on mud, which is why they are heavy and slimy, and they do not eat fish at all; and because they spend their time in the mud they often swim up to the surface, in order to wash off the slime. None of the sea creatures eats their young, which is why they become numerous; but once they have grown, they are then eaten by the other fish, and especially by the acharnus. The mullet is the greediest and most insatiable of fish, which is why its belly becomes distended, and when it is not fasting it is in poor condition; when frightened it hides its head, as if by this it were hiding its whole body. The dentex too is carnivorous, and eats cephalopods. This fish and the sea-bass often vomit out their stomachs when pursuing smaller fish, because in fish the stomach lies close to the mouth and they have no gullet.

13| Some fish, then, as has been said, are carnivorous only, as the dolphin, the dentex, the gilthead, and the cartilaginous fish, along with the cephalopods; others for the most part feed on mud, seaweed, sea-moss, the plant called caulion, and other growing matter — for instance the wrasse, the goby, and the rock-fish; the wrasse does not touch any other flesh except that of shrimp. Often, as has been said, they also eat one another, the larger eating the smaller. A sign that they are carnivorous is that they are caught with baits of that kind. Bonito, tunny, and sea-bass are for the most part carnivorous but also eat seaweed. The sargue follows in the mullet's wake, and when the mullet has stirred up the mud and moved off (for it is able to dig), the sargue comes down after it and feeds there, and prevents weaker fish than itself from coming in with it. The fish called the parrotfish alone among fish is thought to chew the cud, as four-footed animals do. In other fish the pursuit of the weaker takes place mouth to mouth, in the direction in which they naturally swim; but the cartilaginous fish, dolphins, and all the cetaceans turn on their backs to seize their prey, since their mouth is set low down.

14| For this reason the smaller fish are the more likely to escape; otherwise they would seem to be very few indeed, so remarkable is thought to be the swiftness of the dolphin and its capacity for eating. Of eels, a few in certain places feed also on mud and on food thrown to them if one supplies it, but most feed on fresh water; and eel-keepers see to it that this is kept as clean as possible, letting it constantly flow off and flow on over flat stones, or else they plaster the eel-ponds with clay. For eels are quickly suffocated if the water is not clean, since their gills are small. That is why, when men hunt them, they stir up the water; and in the Strymon they are caught around the setting of the Pleiades, for at that time the water and mud are churned up by the contrary winds that then arise; otherwise it is better for them to keep still. Eels that have died do not rise to the surface or float upward, as most fish do, for their belly is small. Few of them have fat; most have none. They can live out of the water for as many as five or six days, more of them if the winds are northerly, fewer if southerly. And when they change over in summer from the marshes into the eel-ponds they die, but not in winter.

15| They cannot endure violent changes either, as happens with those who carry them if they dip them into cold water; for they often perish in a body from this. They are also suffocated if kept in too little water. This same thing happens with other fish as well: they are suffocated if they are always kept in the same and too little water, just as air-breathing creatures are if a small amount of air is shut in around them. Some eels live as long as seven or eight years. River fish also use as food both one another, eating each other, and plants and roots, and whatever they can get in the mud. They feed more by night, and withdraw into the deep water during the day.

16| This, then, is how matters stand concerning the food of fish. Of birds, all those that are hook-taloned are carnivorous, and cannot swallow grain even if one feeds it to them by hand, for example all the kinds of eagles, and kites, and both kinds of hawks, the dove-killer and the finch-hawk (these differ greatly from each other in size), and the buzzard; the buzzard is the size of a kite, and it is seen throughout the year. Also the lammergeier and the vulture; the lammergeier is larger than the eagle in size, and ash-colored, and of vultures there are two species, one small and whiter, the other larger and more ash-colored. Also, some of the night birds are hook-taloned, for example the night-raven, the little owl, and the eagle-owl. The eagle-owl is similar in appearance to the little owl, but in size no smaller than an eagle. Also the eleos, the aigolios, and the scops-owl. Of these, the eleos is larger than a cock, the aigolios is about the same size; both hunt jays. The scops-owl is smaller than the little owl. All three of these are similar in appearance and are all carnivorous. And among those that are not hook-taloned, some too are carnivorous, for example the swallow.

17| The grub-eaters are birds such as the finch, the sparrow, the batis, the greenfinch, and the tit. Of tits there are three species: the finch-tit is the largest (it is the size of a finch), another is the mountain-tit, so called because it spends its time in the mountains, and it has a long tail; the third is similar to these but differs in size, being the smallest. Also the fig-pecker, the blackcap, the bullfinch, the robin, the epilais, the oistros, and the tyrant-bird; this last is a little larger than a locust, has a crimson crest, and is otherwise a graceful and well-proportioned little bird. The anthos: this is the size of a finch. The mountain-finch: this is similar to the finch and close to it in size, except that it has a dark-blue neck, and it spends its time in the mountains. Also the kinglet, and the seed-picker. These birds, then, and others like them, are grub-eaters, some entirely so and some for the most part; but the following are thistle-eaters: the linnet, the thraupis, and also the bird called the goldfinch. For all of these feed on thistles, and none of them eats a grub or any living creature at all; and they sleep and feed in the same place. Others are gnat-eaters, which live chiefly by hunting gnats, such as the greater and the lesser pipo; some call both of these woodpeckers;

18| they are similar to one another and have a similar call, except that the larger one's call is louder. Both of these feed by flying up against tree trunks. Also the keleos: the keleos is the size of a turtledove, and entirely green in color; it is a very vigorous wood-pecker, and feeds mostly on trees, and has a loud call; this bird occurs chiefly in the Peloponnese. There is another called the gnat-picker, small in size, about as large as the little thistle-finch, ash-colored and speckled; it has a small voice, and it too is a wood-pecker. Others live by eating fruit and grass, such as the wood-pigeon, the ring-dove, the pigeon, the stock-dove, and the turtledove. The ring-dove and the pigeon are seen throughout the year, but the turtledove only in summer; for in winter it disappears, since it goes into hiding. The stock-dove is seen and caught chiefly in autumn; in size the stock-dove is larger than the pigeon but smaller than the wood-pigeon; and it is caught chiefly while gulping down water. They arrive in these regions already having chicks; but all the others arrive in summer and nest here, and most of them rear their young on animal food, except the pigeon-like birds. Of practically all birds, some go about on foot in search of food, others live around rivers and lakes, and others around the sea; and of these, the web-footed ones spend most of their time in the water itself, while the split-footed ones spend it around the water's edge;

19| and some of these, those that are not carnivorous, feed on creatures that dive under water, as for example, around lakes and rivers, the heron and the white heron; the latter is smaller in size than the former, and has a broad, long beak. Also the stork and the gull; the gull is ash-colored. And the reed-warbler, and the wagtail, and the pygargos; this last is the largest of these smaller birds, being the size of a thrush. All of these wag their tails. Also the skalidris; this bird is mottled, but ash-colored overall. The kingfisher family, too, lives by the water's edge. There happen to be two species of it: one utters a call, perching on reeds, while the other is silent; this latter is larger; both have a dark-blue back. And the wren. By the sea are the kingfisher and the kerylos. The crows too feed there, seizing on creatures cast up by the sea; for the crow eats anything. Also the white gull, the kepphos, the shearwater, and the plover. Of the web-footed birds, the heavier ones live around rivers and lakes, such as the swan, the duck, the coot, the grebe, and also the boskas, which resembles the duck but is smaller, and the bird called the raven;

20| this bird is the size of a stork, except that it has shorter legs; it is web-footed and swims, and is black in color; it perches on trees and nests there, alone among birds of this kind. Also the goose, and the small gregarious goose, and the fox-goose, and the aix, and the penelops. The sea-eagle spends its time by the sea, and it also strikes creatures of the marshes. Many birds are also omnivorous. The hook-taloned birds attack other animals too, whatever they can overpower, including other birds; but they do not eat one another within their own kind, as fish often do, which attack even their own kind. The whole race of birds drinks little, and the hook-taloned ones do not drink at all, except for a few kinds, and even these only rarely. The kestrel is especially of this kind. And the kite, though rarely, has been seen drinking.

21| The scaly animals, such as the lizard and the other four-footed creatures of this kind, and snakes, are omnivorous; for they are both carnivorous and eat grass. Snakes are also the greediest of animals. Now these too drink little, as do all other animals that have a spongy lung; and all animals with little blood and all egg-laying animals have a spongy lung. Snakes are also unable to control themselves around wine; that is why some people hunt vipers by setting out wine in shallow dishes among stone walls, for the snakes are caught while drunk. Being carnivorous, snakes drain dry whatever animal they take, and pass the whole of it out again in their excrement. Nearly all other such creatures do the same, for instance spiders; except that spiders drain the juice out of their prey outside their body, while snakes do it inside their belly. The snake takes whatever prey happens to be offered to it (for it eats both small birds and wild creatures, and it swallows eggs whole); once it has taken its prey, it works it back and forth until it arrives at the end and sets it straight, and then it draws itself together and contracts into a small compass, so that when it stretches out again, the thing swallowed passes down. It does this because its gullet is narrow and long. Both venomous spiders and snakes are able to live a long time without food; this can be observed from those kept by drug-sellers.

22| Among the quadrupeds that bear live young, all the wild and sharp-toothed ones are flesh-eating; except that wolves, they say, when hungry, eat a certain earth — this alone among animals. They do not touch grass at other times, but when they are sick, just as dogs also do, they eat it and then vomit and purge themselves. Wolves that hunt alone eat human flesh more than [they] do the packs. The animal that some call the glanos and others the hyena is no smaller in size than a wolf, and has a mane like a horse's, with hair that is even coarser and longer, running along the whole length of its spine. It plots against and hunts human beings, and it hunts dogs too, by vomiting, just as men do. And it digs up graves, driven by a craving for this kind of flesh-eating. The bear is omnivorous. For it eats fruit, and climbs trees because of the suppleness of its body, and it eats pulse-crops as well. It also eats honey, breaking open the hives, and crabs and ants, and it eats flesh too. For because of its strength it attacks not only deer but also wild pigs, if it can catch them off guard by falling upon them, and bulls as well; for coming face to face with the bull, it throws itself down on its back, and when the bull tries to strike it, it seizes the horns with its forelegs, and biting the bull's shoulder-blade with its mouth, brings the bull down.

23| It also walks on its two hind feet, upright, for a short time. It eats all meat only after first letting it rot somewhat. The lion is flesh-eating, like the other wild sharp-toothed animals, but it feeds voraciously, swallowing many pieces whole without tearing them apart, and then goes without food for two or three days; for it can do this because it has overfilled itself. It drinks little. It passes excrement rarely: it comes on the third day, or whenever it happens to, and it is dry and drained of moisture, like a dog's. It also emits very pungent flatulence, and its urine has a strong smell, which is why dogs sniff at trees; for it urinates lifting its leg, just like dogs. And by breathing on the things it eats it produces a heavy smell in them; indeed, when it is cut open, its insides give off a heavy vapor. Some wild quadrupeds get their food around lakes and rivers; but around the sea, none does so except the seal. Such are the animal called the beaver, and the satherion, and the satyrion, and the otter, and the one called the latax; this last is broader than the otter, and has strong teeth, for going out often by night it cuts down the poplars along the river with its teeth.

24| The otter also bites human beings, and does not let go, they say, until it hears the sound of bone breaking. The latax has coarse fur, and its appearance is between that of the seal's coat and that of the deer's.

25| Among animals, the sharp-toothed ones drink by lapping; and so do some of those that are not sharp-toothed, such as mice. Those with a continuous row of teeth drink by sucking, such as horses and cattle. The bear neither sucks nor laps, but gulps. Among birds too, the rest drink by sucking, except that the long-necked ones do so with pauses, lifting their heads, while the purple gallinule alone gulps. Horned animals, both tame and wild, and all those that are not sharp-toothed, are all fruit-eating and grass-eating, when not overcome by extreme hunger — except the pig; this animal is least of all grass-eating and fruit-eating. The pig is the most root-eating of all animals, because its snout is well-formed by nature for this work, and it is the least fussy of all animals about any kind of food. It also gains in fatness fastest of all in proportion to its size; for it fattens in sixty days, and those engaged in this business find out how much it has gained by weighing it while fasting. It fattens well if starved beforehand for three days; and pretty much all the other animals fatten well too if starved beforehand. After the three days, those who fatten pigs then feed them well. The Thracians fatten them by giving them drink on the first day, then at first leaving a gap of one day, then afterward two, then three and four, up to seven. This animal is fattened on barley, millet, figs, acorns, wild pears, cucumbers. Both these animals and the others that have a warm belly are fattened most of all by keeping still; pigs are fattened also by wallowing in mud. They prefer to graze grouped by age. The pig also fights the wolf. From the weight it carries while alive, a sixth part is lost into bristles and blood and such things. Sows too, while suckling, and all other animals as well, become thinner.

26| This, then, is how matters stand. Cattle are both fruit-eating and grass-eating, and they are fattened on gas-producing foods, such as vetch and crushed beans and green bean-shoots, and if one cuts the skin, blows air under it, and afterward gives food to the older animals; also on barley, both plain and hulled, and on sweet things, such as figs and raisins and wine and elm leaves; but sunshine and warm baths fatten them most of all. The horns of young cattle, when warmed with wax, can easily be bent wherever one wishes; and they suffer less pain in their feet if one anoints their horns with wax or pitch or oil. Herd cattle suffer more, when moved about, from frost than from snow. They grow larger when they are kept unmated for more years; this is why the people of Epirus keep the cattle called Pyrrhic ones unmated for nine years and call them apotauroi, so that they may grow larger. They say the number of these is about four hundred, the private property of the kings, and that they cannot live in any other country — and yet some have tried.

27| Horses, mules, and donkeys are fruit-eating and grass-eating, but they are fattened most of all by drink; for as the beasts of burden take to drinking the water, so too they stand with regard to their enjoyment of food, and wherever the water is less disagreeable to them, that place has the better grazing. Couch-grass makes the coat sleek when it is in seed; but when it has hard awns, it is not good. Of lucerne, the first cutting is poor, and so is that grown wherever foul-smelling water is led onto it, for the grass takes on that smell. Cattle seek out clean water to drink, but horses do as camels do; the camel drinks turbid, thick water more gladly, and does not drink from rivers until it has stirred them up. It can also hold out without drinking for as many as four days; then after that it drinks a great quantity. The elephant eats, at most, nine Macedonian medimnoi at a single meal; but so great a quantity is dangerous for it; as a rule it eats six or seven medimnoi, and five medimnoi of barley-meal, and five maris of wine (a maris is six kotylai). There has already been a case of an elephant drinking fourteen Macedonian metretai of water at one time, and then again another eight in the evening. Most camels live about thirty years, but some much longer, for they even live up to a hundred years. As for the elephant, some say it lives about two hundred years, others three hundred.

29| Sheep and goats are both grass-eaters, but they graze differently: sheep stay put and graze steadily in one place, while goats shift about quickly and only nibble at the tips of the plants. What fattens a sheep most is its drink, and that is why in summer shepherds give a medimnus of salt for every hundred sheep, every five days; this makes the flock healthier and fatter. And for this same reason they salt most of what they feed them — for instance, they put a great deal of salt on the chaff (since a thirsty sheep drinks more), and in autumn they sprinkle salt on the gourd, for this too makes them give more milk. And sheep that are kept moving about at midday drink more toward evening. And when they are salted before giving birth, their udders drop down larger. Sheep are fattened by olive-shoots, wild olive, bitter vetch, and chaff of whatever kind is available; and all of these fatten them more if sprinkled with brine. These feeds also produce more fattening when the sheep have first been starved for three days beforehand. For sheep, in autumn a north wind's water is better than a south wind's, and pastures to the west are beneficial, while travel and hardship make them lean. Shepherds can tell which of the ewes are strong, when it is winter weather, by whether they have frost on them or not; for the weak ones, moving about because of their weakness, shake it off, while the strong ones do not. In every four-footed animal the meat is worse where they graze in marshy places than where the ground is higher. Sheep with broad tails winter better than those with long tails, and short-haired sheep better than shaggy ones; curly-fleeced sheep also winter badly. Sheep are healthier than goats, but goats are stronger than sheep. In sheep that have been bitten by wolves, the fleeces and the wool, and the garments made from them, become far more prone to lice than those from other sheep.

30| Among insects, those that have teeth eat anything, while those that have only a tongue feed on liquids, sucking them out from every side with it. And of these, some eat anything (for they taste every kind of flavor), such as flies, while others feed on blood, like the horsefly and the gadfly; others live on the juices of plants and fruits. The bee alone settles on nothing rotten, and uses no food at all except what has a sweet flavor; and bees take in water most gladly where it springs up clean.

31| The kinds of animals, then, make use of the foods that have been described. All their activities concern mating and the bearing of young, and are directed toward securing an abundant food supply, and are arranged with a view to cold and heat, and to the changes of the seasons. For all animals have an innate perception of the change in hot and cold, and just as, among men, some move into their houses for the winter, while others, who hold sway over a great extent of country, spend the summer in the cold regions and the winter in the warm ones, so too do those animals that are able to change their locations. And some find their remedies right in the places they are used to, while others migrate — after the autumn equinox, fleeing the oncoming winter, away from the Black Sea and the cold regions, and after the spring equinox, out of fear of the heat, away from the hot regions into the cold ones; some make their moves from nearby places, and others, so to speak, from the very ends of the earth, as the cranes do; for they move from the plains of Scythia to the marshes above Egypt, from which the Nile flows —

32| and there they are said to make war on the Pygmies; for this is not a fable, but in truth there really is a small race, just as it is said, both the people themselves and their horses, and they live a cave-dwelling life. Pelicans too migrate, and they fly from the river Strymon to the Danube, and there they breed; they leave in a mass, the ones in front waiting for those behind, because when they fly over the mountain the ones in front become invisible to those behind. Fish, too, migrate in the same way: some move from the Black Sea and back into the Black Sea, while others, in winter, move from the open sea toward the land, pursuing warmth, and in summer move from the coastal waters into the open sea, fleeing the warmth. And the weaker birds, in winter and in frosts, come down into the plains for the sake of warmth, while in summer they withdraw up into the mountains because of the heat. It is always the weaker creatures that make the move first, at either extreme — for example, mackerel move before tunny, and quails before cranes; for the one group changes location in the month Boedromion, the other in Maimacterion.

33| All creatures are fatter when they change from the cold regions than when they change from the warm ones — quails, for instance, are fatter in autumn than in spring. This happens because they are changing from the cold regions and at the same time from the warm season. They are also more eager to mate in the spring season, and when they are changing from the warm regions. Now among birds, the cranes, as has been said before, migrate to the farthest extremes from the farthest extremes. They fly with the wind. The story about the stone is false — it is said that they carry a stone as ballast, which becomes useful for testing gold, once they have vomited it up. Wood-pigeons and rock-doves also depart and do not spend the winter, and so do swallows and turtle-doves; but common doves remain behind. Quails do the same, unless some are left behind, along with some of the turtle-doves and quails, in places with a good aspect toward the sun. Wood-pigeons and turtle-doves gather in flocks both when they arrive and again when it is time to go back. As for quails, when they land, if the weather is fair or the wind is from the north, they pair off and do well, but if the wind is from the south, they have a hard time of it because they are poor fliers —

34| for that wind is moist and heavy. That is why hunters go after them when the wind is southerly. In fair weather they do not fly, because of their weight; for their body is bulky, and that is why they fly calling out — because it costs them effort. Now when they cross over from that side, they have no leaders; but when they depart from this side, the glottis migrates along with them, and the corncrake, and the little owl, and the ortolan, which also calls them at night; and when the hunters hear its voice, they know that the quails are not staying put. The corncrake is similar in shape to the marsh birds, and the glottis has a tongue that projects a long way out. The little owl is like the owls, and has little wing-like tufts about its ears; some call it the night-raven. It is a mischievous mimic, and is caught by dancing back at it, while one of the two hunters comes around behind it, just as the owl is caught. In general, all the hook-taloned birds are short-necked, broad-tongued, and given to mimicry; for the Indian bird, the parrot, the so-called man-tongued bird, is of this kind, and it also becomes more unruly when it drinks wine. Among birds the ones that flock together are the crane, the swan, the pelican, and the small goose.

35| Among fish, as has been said, some move toward the land from the open sea and from the land into the open sea, fleeing the extremes of cold and heat. Those near the shore are better than those of the open sea, for they have more and better feeding grounds; for wherever the sun strikes, more grows, and it grows better and more tender, as in gardens. The black seaweed too grows near the land, while the other kind is like that found in the wild. Moreover the regions of the sea near the shore happen to have a good mixture of hot and cold; and that is why the flesh of fish from such places holds together better, while that of fish from the open sea is moist and loose. Fish that live near the shore include the sinodon, the black bream, the sea-perch, the gilthead, the grey mullet, the red mullet, the wrasse, the weever, the callionymus, the goby, and all the rock-fish; fish of the open sea include the sting-ray and the cartilaginous fish, and the white conger-eels, the channa, the sea-bream, and the glaucus; while the sea-bream proper, the scorpion-fish, the black conger-eels, the morays, and the gurnard live in both. There are also differences among these according to place — around Crete, for instance, the gobies and all the rock-fish become fat. And the tunny too is good again after the rising of Arcturus;

36| For it has already stopped being in heat at this season; and this is why it is inferior in summer. Many fish also occur in lagoons, for example saupes, gilthead bream, red mullet, and most of the others as well. Bonito also occur, for instance around Alopeconnesus; and in Lake Bistonis most kinds of fish are found. Most mackerel do not enter the Black Sea; they spend the summer in the Propontis and spawn there, and they winter in the Aegean. Tunny, young tunny, and bonito enter the Black Sea in spring and spend the summer there, and so do most of the migratory and shoaling fish. Most fish are shoaling. All shoaling fish have leaders. They swim into the Black Sea both for food (for the feeding ground there is both larger and better because the water is fresh) and because the large predators are fewer there; for apart from the dolphin and the porpoise there is nothing large in the Black Sea, and even the dolphin there is small, whereas as soon as one goes outside they are large. So they swim in both for food and for spawning; for there are places there suitable for giving birth, and the fresh, sweeter water nurtures the young.

37| When they have given birth and their offspring have grown, they swim out at once, right after the Pleiades. If the winter wind is southerly, they swim out later; if northerly, sooner, because the wind speeds them on their way; and at that time the small fry are caught around Byzantium, since they have not had much time to grow in the Black Sea. Now the other fish are plainly observed both swimming out and swimming in, but the sprats alone are caught swimming in and are never seen swimming out; indeed when one is caught near Byzantium, the fishermen scour out their nets, since it is not their habit to swim out. The reason is that these alone swim up into the Danube, and then, at the point where it forks, swim down into the Adriatic. A sign of this is that there the opposite happens: they are not caught swimming into the Adriatic, but are caught swimming out. Tunny swim in keeping the land on their right, and swim out keeping it on their left; some say they do this because they see more sharply with the right eye, not being naturally sharp-sighted. The migratory fish travel by day and rest and feed by night, unless there is a moon; when there is, they travel then too and do not rest. Some of those who work at sea say that when the winter solstice comes, they no longer move but stay still wherever they happen to be caught, until the equinox.

38| Mackerel, then, are caught swimming in, and less so swimming out; they are at their best in the Propontis before they spawn. The other migratory fish are caught more often coming out of the Black Sea, and are at their best then; but when they swim in, the ones caught nearest the shore are the fattest, and the further out one goes, the thinner they always are. Often, too, when a south wind blows against the mackerel and the scombers as they swim out, they are caught more further down the coast than around Byzantium. Such, then, is the manner in which they carry out their migrations. The very same thing happens with land animals in the matter of hibernation: in winter they set out for their hiding places, and leave them again when the season turns warmer. Animals make their hiding places as a defense against the extremes of both seasons. In some kinds the whole genus hibernates, in others some do and some do not. For all the testaceans hibernate, such as those in the sea — purple-shellfish, whelks, and every such kind — but in the free-moving ones the hibernation is more evident (for they hide themselves, as scallops do, while others have a covering over the surface, as land snails do), whereas in the fixed ones the change is not apparent.

39| They do not hibernate at the same season: snails hibernate in winter, purple-shellfish and whelks hibernate under the dog star for about thirty days, and scallops around the same time. Most of them hibernate both in the height of the cold and in the height of the heat. Nearly all insects hibernate, except any that live alongside humans in their dwellings, and those that perish and do not live through more than a year. These hibernate in winter. Some hibernate for many days, others only through the most wintry ones, as bees do; for bees too hibernate. A sign of this is that they are never seen tasting the food set beside them; and if one crawls out, it appears transparent, and nothing is visibly present in its stomach. It lies still from the setting of the Pleiades until spring. Animals make their hiding places by concealing themselves in warm spots, and in the places where they are accustomed to lodge.

40| Many blooded animals also hibernate, such as the scaly ones — snakes, lizards, geckos, and river crocodiles — for the four most wintry months, and during that time they eat nothing at all. The other snakes hibernate in the earth, but vipers hide themselves under rocks. Many fish also hibernate, most conspicuously the dolphinfish and the corb, in winter; for these alone are caught nowhere at all except at certain fixed times, always the same ones, whereas nearly all the rest are caught at other times as well. The moray eel, the sea perch, and the conger eel also hibernate. Rock-fish hibernate in pairs, males with females, just as they also nest in pairs — for example the thrush wrasse, the blackbird wrasse, and the perch. Tunny too hibernate in winter, in the depths, and become fattest after hibernation, and begin to be hunted from the rising of the Pleiades until, at the latest, the setting of Arcturus; for the rest of the time they lie still, hibernating. But some of these, and some of the other hibernating creatures too, are caught moving about during the time of hibernation, if the place is warm and unexpected spells of calm weather occur; for they come forward a little way from their den to feed —

41| — and at the full moon. Most creatures are at their sweetest while hibernating. Brills hide themselves in the mud; a sign of this is both that they are not caught, and that, when one is caught, it shows much mud on its back and its fins worn and pressed in. In the spring season they begin to move and come forward toward land to mate and give birth, and are caught while pregnant; and at that time they are thought to be at their best, while those caught in autumn and winter are inferior; and at the same time the males too are seen to be full of milt. So when their young are still small, they are hard to catch, but when the young are larger, many are caught because the females are in heat. Some hibernate in the sand, others in the mud, with only the mouth showing above. Most hibernate only through the winter, but the crustaceans, and among fish the rock-fish, the skates, and the cartilaginous fish, hibernate only through the most wintry days; this is shown by the fact that they are not caught when it is cold. Some fish also hibernate in summer, for example the glaucus; for it hibernates in summer for about sixty days. The hake and the gilthead bream also hibernate; and a sign that the hake hibernates for the longest time is thought to be that it is caught only after the longest interval.

42| A sign that fish also go into hiding in summer seems to be the fact that catches happen at the risings of certain stars, and especially at the rising of the Dog Star; for at that time the sea is said to be stirred up from below. This is most familiar in the Bosporus: the mud rises to the surface, and the fish are carried up with it. And they say that when the sea bottom is repeatedly disturbed, more fish are caught in the same haul the second time than the first. Also, whenever heavy rains occur, many creatures appear that had either never been seen before at all, or not often. Many birds also hibernate, and it is not the case, as some suppose, that they all withdraw to warm regions; rather, those that live near such regions, in which they remain continuously — kites and swallows, for instance — retreat there, while those that are further away from such places do not migrate but hide themselves. Indeed, many swallows have already been seen in hollows, completely plucked bare, and kites too flying out of such places when they first appear. Birds go into hiding without any distinction between the hook-taloned and the straight-taloned kinds: the stork hides, and the blackbird, and the turtledove, and the lark; and the turtledove, by common agreement, most of all — for no one, so to speak, is said to have seen a turtledove anywhere in winter. It begins its hiding while extremely fat, and it molts its feathers during the hiding, but remains fat throughout. Of the wood-pigeons, some hide and some do not, but those that do not depart at the same time as the swallows. The thrush and the starling also hide, and among the hook-taloned birds, the kite for a few days, and the owl.

43| Among the live-bearing quadrupeds, porcupines and bears hide. That wild bears go into hiding is clear; whether this is on account of the cold or for some other reason is disputed. For around this time both males and females become extremely fat, so that they are not readily able to move. The female also gives birth around this season, and stays in hiding until it is time to lead the cubs out; she does this around the third month after the winter solstice, in spring. The minimum period she hides is about forty days; of these, they say, there are twice seven days during which she does not move at all, while for the greater number of days after that she remains in hiding but does move and rouse herself. A pregnant bear has been caught by no one, or by very few. And during this time it is clear that they eat nothing at all; for they do not come out, and when they are caught, both the stomach and the intestines are found to be empty. It is also said that, because they take in nothing, the intestine nearly grows together on itself, and that for this reason, when she first comes out, she tastes wild arum in order to loosen the intestine and widen it out. The dormouse also hides, in the very trees, and becomes fattest at that time; so too the white Pontic mouse.

44| Among the hibernating animals, some shed what is called the slough — this is the outermost skin, the sheath around the areas of generation. Now among the land-dwelling, live-bearing animals, the cause of the bear's hibernation is disputed, as was said before; but of the scaly creatures, nearly all hide, and those shed the slough whose skin is soft and not shell-like, as in the tortoise (for the tortoise too belongs to the scaly kind, and so does the freshwater tortoise) — but rather, creatures such as the gecko and the lizard, and above all the snakes: these shed both in spring, when they come out, and again in autumn. Vipers too shed the slough both in spring and in autumn, and it is not true, as some say, that this kind of snake alone does not shed. When snakes begin to shed, the skin first comes loose from the eyes in every case, so that to those who do not understand the condition they seem to have gone blind; after this it comes loose from the head, and appears white all over. The whole slough is cast off in about a night and a day, beginning from the head and going down to the tail. As the shedding occurs, the parts that were inside come to be outside;

45| for the creature sheds it just as embryos come out of their membranes. In the same way insects too shed the slough, as many as do shed it — for instance the cockroach, the gnat, and the beetles, such as the dung beetle. All of these shed it after birth: for just as the membrane is shed by live-bearing creatures, and the covering is torn away for those generated as grubs, the same happens with bees and locusts. Cicadas, when they emerge, settle on olive trees and on reeds. When the covering is torn open, they come out leaving behind a small amount of moisture, and not long after they fly up and sing. Among sea creatures, crawfish and lobsters shed sometimes in spring, sometimes in autumn, after their spawning. Some crawfish that have already been caught have been found with the parts around the thorax soft, because the shell has come apart there, but the lower parts hard, because it has not yet come apart there; for they do not carry out the shedding in the same way as snakes do. Crawfish hide for about five months. Crabs also shed the slough — the soft-shelled kind, by common agreement, and they say the hard-shelled kind does too, such as the spider-crabs. When they shed, their shells become entirely soft, and crabs are then not very able to walk.

46| Such creatures shed not once but many times. So it has been said which creatures hide, and when and how, and further which creatures shed the slough and when. Animals fare well according to the seasons, but not the same ones, nor alike in every excess of weather; and further, health and disease differ by season for creatures of different kinds, and are not, on the whole, the same for all. For birds, then, dry spells are beneficial both for their general health and for their breeding, and not least for the wood-pigeons; for fish, apart from a few exceptions, rainy spells are beneficial. The opposite is harmful to each: for birds, years of heavy rain (for it is not at all beneficial for them to drink much), and for fish, dry spells. Now the hook-taloned birds, as has been said before, are, generally speaking, entirely without drinking (though Hesiod was ignorant of this — for in his narrative about the siege of Nineveh he represents the eagle, the presiding bird of prophecy, as drinking); but the other birds do drink, though they are not heavy drinkers; and likewise none of the other creatures with a spongy lung that lay eggs is a heavy drinker either. In birds, sickness becomes evident in the plumage: it becomes disordered, and does not keep the same condition it has when they are healthy.

47| Most kinds of fish thrive more, as has been said before, in years of heavy rain; for not only do they then have more food, but rainwater is in general beneficial to them, just as it is to things that grow from the earth — for vegetables, even when irrigated, nevertheless do better when rained on more. Reeds growing in marshes suffer the same thing: they scarcely grow at all, so to speak, unless rains occur. A sign of this is also the fact that most fish migrate into the Black Sea in summer; for on account of the number of rivers the water is sweeter there, and the rivers carry down much food. Further, many fish swim up into rivers, and thrive both in rivers and in marshes — the amia and the grey mullet, for instance. Gobies too become fat in rivers; and in general, well-watered regions have the best fish. Of the waters themselves, summer rains are more beneficial to most fish, and it is best when spring, summer, and autumn are rainy while winter is mild. And, generally speaking, whenever there is a good year for human beings as well, most fish also happen to fare well.

48| In cold places fish do not thrive. Those that have a stone in their head suffer most in winter storms — for example the chromis, the bass, the sciaena, the sea-bream — for on account of the stone for on account of the stone they are frozen stiff by the cold and are cast ashore. Now rain water is on the whole more beneficial to most fish, but for the grey mullet and the cephalus and the fish some call the myrinos, the opposite holds: for the majority of these go blind more quickly from the rain waters, if the rains are too excessive. This is what the cephali usually suffer, more so in the winter storms, for their eyes turn white, and at that time they are caught thin, and in the end they perish altogether. It seems that they suffer this not so much on account of the excess of rain as on account of the cold; at any rate, elsewhere too, and around Nauplia in the Argolid near the shallow lagoon, many blind ones have been caught when a strong cold spell has come on, and many have also been caught with a white appearance to their eyes. The gilthead also suffers in winter, and in summer the acharnas suffers and becomes thin. As a rule the dry years of the cycle suit the corocinus more than they do other fish, and this too because warmth results more in times of drought. Different places suit different fish for thriving: whatever fish are by nature inshore or open-sea fish thrive in each of these respectively, and whatever fish do both thrive in both;

49| and there are also particular places special to each kind, in which they thrive. Speaking generally, weedy places suit fish well: at any rate fatter fish are caught in such places, both those that graze on all sorts of ground — for the weed-eaters find food in plenty, while the flesh-eaters meet with more fish there to prey on. Fish also differ as between the north-facing and the south-facing waters: the long-bodied kinds thrive better in northern waters, and in summer in summer, in the same locality and with north winds, more of the long-bodied kinds are caught than of the flat. Tunny and swordfish are afflicted with a gadfly-sting around the rising of the dog star; for both of them at that time have, beside their fins, a kind of little worm called the oestrus, resembling a scorpion, about the size of a spider. These cause them such distress that the swordfish sometimes leaps no less high than the dolphin, and for this reason they often fall into boats. Tunny of all fish delight most in warmth, and they come in close to the sand near the shore for the sake of the warmth, because they are warmed there, and they rise to the surface. The small fry survive because they are overlooked, for the big fish pursue the bigger prey. Of the eggs and the spawn a great part is destroyed by the heat;

50| for whatever the heat touches, all of this it spoils. Fish are caught above all before sunrise and after sunset, and in general around the setting and rising of the sun; for these are said to be the favorable casts, and this is why fishermen haul up their nets at this hour. For it is above all at these times that fish are deceived through their sight: during the night they lie still, but as the light increases they see better. No plague-like disease appears to fall upon fish, of the sort that often happens among men and among the live-bearing quadrupeds — horses and cattle — and among some other animals, both tame and wild; still, they do seem to fall ill. Fishermen judge this from the fact that some are caught thin and resembling weakened animals, having changed color, in many cases, having been taken among many fat specimens of the very same kind. This, then, is how matters stand with the sea fish.

51| As for the river and lake fish, no plague-like disease occurs among these either, but particular diseases fall upon some of them. For example the sheatfish, especially around the rising of the dog star, because it swims near the surface, becomes star-struck and is stunned by a violent thunderclap. The carp too sometimes suffers this, though less. Sheatfish in shallow water are also killed in large numbers when struck by the dragon-serpent. In the ballerus and the tilon a worm that develops in them around the rising of the dog star drives them to the surface and weakens them; and having come to the surface, the fish perishes from the heat. On the chalcis a violent disease falls: lice that form under the gills kill many of them in great numbers. None of the other fish has any such disease. Fish are killed by mullein; and this is why some hunters catch fish in rivers and lakes by poisoning the water with this substance, while the Phoenicians do the same even with fish in the sea. Some also carry out two other kinds of fish-hunting. Because fish flee the deep parts of rivers in winter (and in any case fresh water is cold), hunters dig a trench into the river through dry ground; then, having roofed this over with brushwood and stones, they make a kind of lair, with an outlet into the river;

52| and when the water freezes over, they hunt the fish out of this lair with a wicker trap. And they carry out another kind of hunting too, alike in summer and winter: in the middle of the river they fence off an area with brushwood and stones, leaving only a mouth-like opening; into this they place a wicker trap and hunt the fish, then remove the stones. Among the shelled creatures, rainy years suit the rest well, except the purple-shellfish. Here is the sign: when a purple-shellfish is placed where a river discharges into the sea, and they taste the water, they die that very day. And the purple-shellfish, once caught, lives about fifty days. They feed on one another, for something like seaweed and moss grows on their shells. What people throw in as food for them is said, they claim, to serve the purpose of weight, so as to make them draw in more. For the other shelled creatures droughts are unfavorable: they become fewer and inferior, and the scallops turn more reddish at such times. Once, in the strait at Pyrrha, the scallops died out — not only because of the instrument with which people scraped them up in hunting them, but also because of the droughts. For the other shelled creatures too, rainy years are favorable, because the sea becomes sweeter. In the Black Sea, because of the cold, they do not occur at all, nor in the rivers, except a few of the two-shelled kind;

53| the single-shelled kind get frozen fast especially in the ice. This, then, is how matters stand concerning the water-dwelling animals. Among the quadrupeds, pigs suffer from three diseases. One of these is called quinsy, in which above all the parts about the throat and the jaws become inflamed. It can occur wherever it happens to strike on the body, for often it takes hold in the foot, and sometimes in the ear. The part next to it at once becomes putrid, until it reaches the lung — at which point the animal dies. It spreads quickly, and the animal eats nothing at all once the affliction has begun, however slight. Swineherds cure it, when they notice it while it is still small, in no other way than by cutting the whole thing out. There are two other diseases, and both are said to be called kraura: of these, one is a pain and heaviness in the head, which is what carries off most of the pigs it strikes, and the other is that the bowels run. This latter is considered incurable, while for the former they help the animal by applying wine to the nostrils and flushing the nostrils with wine. Even this one is hard to escape, for it kills within three or four days. Pigs suffer quinsy most when the summer has turned out fine and they have grown very fat; mulberries given as food help, and so does a bath, if it is copious and hot, and if one lances beneath the tongue.

54| Pigs that are moist-fleshed are prone to measles around the legs and around the neck and the shoulders — the parts in which measles also occur most. If a pig has few, its flesh is sweeter; but if many, it becomes too moist and juicy. Measly pigs are easy to detect: they have the measles especially under the tongue, and if one plucks hairs from the mane, the skin appears bloodshot. Further, measly pigs cannot keep their hind legs still. They have no measles as long as they are only sucklings. They expel the measles by rubbing themselves, which is also useful for their feeding. Chickpeas and figs are best for fattening and nourishing them, but on the whole one should not give a single kind of food but a varied one, for pigs enjoy change just as other animals do; and they say that of what is given, one kind puffs them up with wind, another builds flesh, and another fattens; that they eat acorns gladly, but acorns make the flesh moist; and that if pregnant sows eat many of them, they miscarry, as sheep also do — for sheep suffer this more conspicuously, because of acorns.

55| Of the animals we know, only the pig gets measles. Dogs suffer from three diseases: these are called rabies, quinsy, and gout. Of these, rabies produces madness, and when a rabid dog bites, everything it bites goes rabid except man; and this disease kills both the dogs themselves and anything bitten by a rabid dog, except man. Quinsy also kills dogs, and few escape from gout as well. Rabies also afflicts camels. They say elephants are immune to other ailments but are troubled by wind. Herd cattle suffer two diseases, one called gout, the other called krauros. In gout their feet swell, but they do not die, nor do they lose their hooves; they fare better if their horns are smeared with hot pitch. When they have krauros, their breath becomes hot and rapid; and what fever is in humans, krauros is in cattle. A sign of the sickness: they droop their ears and cannot eat. They die quickly, and when opened up, the lung is found to be rotten.

56| Of horses, the pastured herds are free from other ailments except gout; this they do suffer, and sometimes they shed their hooves; but when they shed one, another grows in its place at once, for the loss of one hoof occurs at the same time as the other is growing beneath it. A sign of the sickness: the right testicle twitches, or else, a little below the nostrils, midway, a hollow, wrinkled place forms. Stabled horses suffer from the most ailments. They also get colic; a sign of the sickness is that they drag their hind legs up under their forelegs and shuffle them along, so that they nearly knock them together. If a horse has gone without food for the preceding days and then becomes frantic, one helps it by bleeding it and by lancing it. They also get tetanus; a sign of this is that all the veins are drawn taut, along with the head and neck, and the horse walks with its legs held straight and stiff. Horses also develop internal abscesses. Another affliction also takes hold of them, called krithian; a sign of this sickness is that the palate becomes soft and the breath is hot. These are incurable, unless they resolve of themselves. There is also what is called being nymph-struck, in which the horse is held motionless whenever someone plays the pipe, and being downcast-eyed; and whenever someone mounts it, it trots along, until it is on the point of breaking into a run over a certain course;

57| and it is always dejected-looking, even if it should break into a wild run. A sign of this too: it lays its ears back against its mane and then stretches them forward again, and it collapses, and pants. The following are also incurable: if the horse suffers pain in the heart (a sign of this is that its flanks are hollow while it is in pain), and if the bladder is displaced (a sign of this too is being unable to urinate, and dragging its hooves and haunches). Also if it snaps up a staphylinus; this is about the size of a sphondyle. The bites of the shrew are also dangerous for the other draft animals; blisters form. The bite is more dangerous if a pregnant shrew bites; for then the blisters burst, but otherwise they do not. Biting, the creature called by some the chalkis and by others the zignis also kills or causes severe pain; it resembles the small lizards, but in color resembles the blind snakes. On the whole, experienced people say that a horse and a sheep suffer from almost all the same diseases a man does. Both a horse and every draft animal are destroyed by the poison sandarach; it is given dissolved in water and strained. A pregnant mare also miscarries at the smell of a lamp being put out; this happens to some pregnant women too. This, then, is how matters stand concerning the diseases of horses. As for what is called hippomanes, it grows, as is said, on foals, and mares lick it off and clean it away by biting it off;

58| but the further stories told about it are fabrications, made up rather by women and by those concerned with incantations. It is agreed, however, that mares also expel what is called the polion before the foal itself. Horses also recognize, on hearing it, the voice of horses they happen to have fought with. Horses delight in meadows and marshes; indeed they drink muddy water, and even when it is clean, horses stir it up with their hooves and then, having drunk, bathe in it. For the animal is altogether fond of bathing and fond of water; and this is also why the nature of the river-horse is constituted as it is. The ox is the opposite of the horse: unless the water is clean and cold and unmixed, it will not drink. Donkeys suffer especially from one disease, which they call melis. It occurs first around the head, and thick, reddish-yellow mucus runs from the nostrils; if it descends to the lung, it kills; but what stays confined to the head at first is not fatal. Of such animals, the donkey is the least able to endure cold; and that is also why donkeys are not found around the Pontus and Scythia.

59| Elephants suffer from flatulent diseases, and because of this they can pass neither their liquid residue nor that of the bowels. And if an elephant eats earth, it is weakened, unless it does so continually; but if continually, it is not harmed at all. It sometimes also swallows stones. It is also seized by diarrhea; when this happens, they treat it by giving it warm water to drink and by dipping its fodder in honey and giving it to eat, and each of these checks it. When elephants grow weary from lack of sleep, their shoulders are restored by rubbing them with salt and oil and warm water. And when an elephant's shoulders hurt, they roast pork and apply it, and this helps them. Some elephants drink oil, others do not; and if it happens that some piece of iron is lodged in the body, the oil expels it when they drink it, so they say; for those that do not drink it, they boil a root in oil and give that to them.

60| This, then, is how matters stand concerning four-footed animals. Most insects thrive in the very season in which they are also born, when the year is like spring — moist and warm. In bees' hives creatures arise that damage the combs: the little spider-like worm that damages the combs (it is called kleros, though some call it pyraustes; it lays in the comb something resembling a spider's web like itself, and it makes the hive sick), and another creature, like the moth that flies around the lamp; this one lays something full of down, and it is not stung by the bees but only flees when smoked. Caterpillars also arise in the hives, which they call teredones; the bees do not fight these off. Bees fall sick most of all when the vegetation bears blighted flowers, and in dry years. All insects die when oiled; most quickly, if one smears their head with oil and sets them in the sun.

61| Animals also differ according to their places. For just as in some places certain animals do not occur at all, so in other places they occur, but fewer and shorter-lived, and do not thrive. And sometimes the difference in such things occurs even in neighboring places, as in the territory of Miletus, in places bordering one another, in one place cicadas occur, in the other they do not; and in Cephallenia a river divides the land, on one side of which cicadas occur, on the other they do not occur. And in Pordoselene a road divides the land, on one side of which the marten occurs, on the other it does not occur. And in Boeotia moles occur in great numbers around Orchomenus, but in neighboring Lebadia there are none, nor, even if one is brought there, will they consent to dig. And in Ithaca the hares, if one brings them and lets them go, cannot live, but are found dead, turned toward the sea, in whatever direction they were brought in. And in Sicily there are no horse-ants, and in Cyrene the frogs that croak did not formerly exist. And in the whole of Libya there is neither wild boar, nor deer, nor wild goat; and in India, as Ctesias says (who is not trustworthy), there is neither wild nor tame swine, but the bloodless animals and all the burrowing creatures are large.

62| And in the Pontus neither the soft-bodied creatures nor the shelled creatures occur, except in a few places and in small numbers; but in the Red Sea all the shelled creatures grow to an enormous size. And in Syria the sheep have tails a cubit in breadth, and the goats have ears a span and a palm's-breadth long, and some let their ears hang down to the ground; and the cattle, like the camels, have manes on their shoulders. And in Lycia the goats are shorn, as sheep are among other peoples. And in Libya the horned kinds of ram grow horns straight away at birth, not only the lambs, as Homer says, but the others too; but in the Pontus around Scythia the opposite happens, for they grow up hornless. And in Egypt some animals are larger than in Greece, such as the cattle and the sheep, and some are smaller, such as the dogs and wolves and hares and foxes and ravens and hawks, and some are about the same, such as crows and goats. The cause given is their food, since for some it is abundant, for others scarce — for example for the wolves and hawks, and for the flesh-eating birds generally the supply is small,

63| for small birds are scarce; and for the hares, and for all that do not eat flesh, the cause is that there are neither nuts nor fruit lasting through the season. In many places the climate too is a cause, as in Illyria and Thrace and Epirus the donkeys are small, while in Scythia and Celtica they do not occur at all, for these regions have harsh winters. In Arabia lizards more than a cubit long occur, and mice much larger than field mice, having front legs a span long, and hind legs reaching as far as the first joint of the fingers. In Libya the size to which snakes grow is boundless, as indeed is reported; for some men say that on sailing up they have seen the bones of many cattle, which it was clear to them had been devoured by snakes; for as they were putting out to sea, the snakes quickly gave chase to the triremes, and some of them capsized a trireme and attacked those aboard. Further, lions occur more in Europe, and within Europe in the region between the Achelous and the Nessus; but leopards occur in Asia, and do not occur in Europe. In general the wild animals are wilder in Asia, and more courageous everywhere in Europe, and most varied in form in Libya;

64| and there is indeed a proverb that says, "Libya always bears something new." For on account of the lack of rain, it seems, animals not of the same kind meet and mate at the watering-places, and produce offspring from those whose periods of gestation are the same and whose sizes do not differ much from one another; and they become gentle toward one another because of their need for drink. For indeed they need to drink, contrary to other animals, more in winter than in summer; for because it is not customary for rain to fall there in summer, drinking is unfamiliar to them at that time. And the mice, whenever they do drink, die. Other kinds too arise from the mating of animals not of the same kind, just as in Cyrene the wolves mate with the dogs and produce offspring, and the Laconian hounds come from a fox and a dog. And they say that the Indian hounds come from a tiger and a dog, not straightaway but at the third mating; for they say the first offspring born is savage. When they lead the dogs, they tie them up in the wilderness, and many are devoured, unless the wild beast happens to be in heat for mating.

65| The places also make differences even in character, as animals living in mountainous and rugged country differ from those living on flat and soft ground; for they are wilder in appearance and more valiant, as with the swine on Athos, whose males will not even tolerate the females of the lowland swine. And with regard to the bites of wild creatures, regions differ greatly; for instance around Pharos and other places the scorpions are not dangerous, while in other places, and in Caria, they occur many and large and dangerous, and if they strike a man or an animal, they kill it, and they kill swine too, which are least sensitive of all animals to bites of other kinds, and among swine they kill the black ones more readily; and swine that have been struck die most quickly if they go into water. Snake bites too differ greatly. For the asp occurs in Libya, from which snake they make the poison used for putrefying, and its bite is otherwise incurable. There also occurs in silphium a certain small snake, for which there is said to be a remedy, a certain stone which men take from the tomb of an ancient king and, having dipped it in wine, drink. In certain places in Italy even the bites of geckos are fatal. Of all bites the most dangerous are those of the venomous creatures, if they happen to have eaten one another, for example a scorpion that has eaten a viper. Human spittle is hostile to most of them. There is also a certain small snake, which some call sacred, which even the very largest snakes flee; the largest it grows to is a cubit, and it is shaggy to look at; whatever it bites immediately putrefies all around. There is also in India a certain small snake for which alone they have no remedy.

66| Animals also differ in thriving or the opposite with regard to pregnancy. For the shelled creatures, such as scallops and all the oyster-like and soft-shelled crustacean kinds, are at their best when pregnant, as with the lobster-like creatures. Pregnancy is spoken of even in the case of the shelled creatures; for the soft-shelled crustaceans are seen both mating and giving birth, but none of the shelled creatures are seen doing so. The soft-bodied creatures too are at their best when pregnant, such as squid and cuttlefish and octopuses. Fish, when they first begin to be pregnant, are nearly all good to eat, but as the pregnancy advances, some remain good and some do not. The picarel, then, is good when pregnant; and the shape of the female is rounder, while the male is longer and broader; and it happens that when the female begins to be pregnant, the males take on a black and more mottled color, and are worst to eat; and around this time some call them "billy-goats." The creatures called blackbirds and thrushes, and the shrimp, also change color according to the seasons, as do some of the birds; for in spring they become black, and then after spring white again. The wrasse also changes its color; for the rest of the time it is white, but in spring it is mottled.

67| This fish alone among the sea fish makes itself a spawning-bed, as they say, and gives birth in the bed. The picarel also changes color, as has been said, and so does the smaris: from being whiter they turn dark again in summer, and this is most noticeable around the fins and gills. The corcinus, too, is best when full of roe, as is the picarel. But the grey mullet, the bass, and the rest of the free-swimming fish are almost all inferior when carrying roe. Not a few are alike whether roe-bearing or not, for example the glaucus. Old fish are also inferior, and old tunnies in particular are poor for salting, since a great part of their flesh wastes away. The same thing happens with the other fish as well. The old ones among them are recognizable by the size of their scales and by their hardness. An old tunny has actually been caught whose weight was fifteen talents, and the span of its tail was five cubits and a span. River fish and lake fish are best after they have shed their spawn and milt, once they have built themselves back up; some are good while carrying roe, such as the saperdis, others poor, such as the sheatfish. Now in all the other fish the males are better than the females, but in the sheatfish the female is better than the male.

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