Natural History — Book X

Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin

1| Next comes the nature of birds. The largest of them, and almost of the class of beasts, the ostriches of Africa or Ethiopia, exceed in height a horseman sitting on his horse and surpass him in speed, their wings having been given them only for this, to help them as they run. Otherwise they are not fliers and do not rise from the ground. They have cloven hooves like a stag's, with which they fight, and which are useful for grasping stones, which they hurl with their feet as they flee against those pursuing them.

2| They have a marvelous ability to digest whatever they have swallowed without distinction, but no less marvelous is the stupidity of creatures of such height in the rest of the body, which think they are hidden when they have hidden their necks in a bush. The rewards from them are their eggs, which on account of their size are used by some as vessels, and the feathers that adorn the crests and helmets of war.

3| The Ethiopians and Indians produce birds of the most varied colors, beyond describing, and above all the famous phoenix of Arabia, perhaps a fable: only one in the whole world, and not often seen. It is said to be of the size of an eagle, with a golden sheen around the neck, purple elsewhere, a blue tail picked out with rose-colored feathers, its throat set off with tufts and its head with a crest of plumes.

4| The first of the Romans to write about it, and the most careful, was Manilius, that senator famed for the greatest learning with no teacher: he says that no one has ever existed who saw it feeding, that in Arabia it is sacred to the Sun, that it lives 540 years, that when it grows old it builds a nest of sprigs of casia and frankincense, fills it with scents and dies on top of it. Then from its bones and marrow is born first something like a little worm, which then becomes a chick; and its first act is to pay due funeral rites to its predecessor and carry the whole nest to the City of the Sun, which is near Panchaia, and lay it on the altar there.

5| The same Manilius reports that with the life of this bird the turning of the great year is accomplished, and that the signs of the seasons and the stars return again the same, and that this begins about noon on the day on which the sun has entered the sign of the Ram; and that the year of that revolution, as he wrote, in the consulship of Publius Licinius and Gnaeus Cornelius, was the 215th. Cornelius Valerianus records that a phoenix flew down into Egypt in the consulship of Quintus Plautius and Sextus Papinius. One was even carried to Rome during the censorship of the emperor Claudius, in the year of the city 800, and displayed in the Comitium, as is attested in the public records, but no one would doubt that it was a fake.

6| Of the birds we know, the eagle has the greatest honor and also the greatest strength. There are six kinds of them. The one the Greeks call melanaetos, also called the hare-eagle, is the smallest in size and outstanding in strength, blackish in color; it alone of the eagles feeds its young (the others, as we shall tell, drive them away), and it alone is without a scream and without a murmur.

7| It lives in the mountains. The second kind, the pygargus, lives in towns and on the plains, and has a whitish tail. The third, the morphnos, which Homer also calls percnus, and some also plangus and the duck-eagle, is second in size and strength; it lives around lakes. Phemonoe, who was called the daughter of Apollo, reported that it has teeth, though otherwise it is mute and has no tongue, and that it is the blackest of the eagles, with a longer tail; Boeus agreed with her. This one also has the clever trick of breaking tortoises it has seized by dropping them from on high, a chance that killed the poet Aeschylus, who, they say, was trying to avoid the collapse foretold for him by fate on that day by trusting himself to the open sky.

8| The fourth kind is the percnopterus, also called oripelargus, vulture-like in appearance, with very small wings, surpassing the others in the rest of its size, but unwarlike and degenerate, so that a raven can beat it; it is also always hungry and greedy, with a whining murmur. It alone of the eagles carries off dead bodies; the others settle down where they have made the kill. This one is the reason why the fifth kind is called gnesios, as being the true one and the only one of uncorrupted descent, of middling size, reddish in color, rarely seen. There remains the haliaetos, with the keenest sight of all, which hovers poised on high and, on seeing a fish in the sea, plunges headlong down on it and, scattering the water with its breast, snatches it.

9| The one we have placed third goes after water birds around the lakes, which dive again and again until it seizes them when they are drowsy and worn out. The fight is worth watching: the bird making for the refuge of the shore, especially if the reeds are thick, the eagle driving it off from there with a blow of the wing and, when it has gone after it in the lake, climbing up and showing its shadow from the shore to the bird swimming under the water, and the bird emerging again in a different place, where it least thinks it is expected. This is the reason why birds swim in flocks, because when there are many together they are not attacked, as they blind the eagle by splashing with their wings. Often too the eagles themselves, unable to bear the weight they have seized, go under with it.

10| The haliaetos alone, striking its chicks while they are still unfledged, forces them again and again to look straight into the sun's rays, and when it notices one blinking and its eyes watering, it throws it headlong from the nest as illegitimate and degenerate. The one whose gaze has held steady against the sun it rears.

11| The haliaeti have no kind of their own, but are born from the mating of different kinds of eagles. What is born from these, in turn, has its kind among the ossifragi, from which the smaller vultures are bred, and from these the large ones, which do not breed at all. Some add a kind of eagle which they call the bearded eagle, and the Tuscans call the ossifraga.

12| In the nest of the first three kinds of eagle and of the fifth, the stone aetites, which some have called gagites, is built in; it is useful for many remedies and loses nothing in fire. This stone is pregnant, with another inside it, which rattles when you shake it, as if in a womb.

13| But that medicinal power is found only in those taken from the nest. They nest on rocks and in trees, lay three eggs, and hatch two chicks; three have sometimes been seen. One they drive out, weary of feeding it. For at that season nature has denied food even to the parents themselves, taking care that the young of all wild creatures should not be carried off. Their talons too are turned inward on those days, and their feathers whiten from lack of food, so that they may well hate their own offspring. But the cast-out chicks are taken up by a related kind, the ossifragi, who rear them with their own.

14| Indeed the parent pursues even the grown young and drives them far away, as rivals, of course, in plunder. Besides, a single pair of eagles needs a great stretch of country for ravaging if it is to be fed to the full. So they mark out their territories and do not hunt in the neighborhood. What they seize they do not carry off at once, but first set it down, and only when they have tried its weight do they depart.

15| They die not of old age or sickness but of hunger, the upper part of the beak growing so much that its hook cannot be opened. They work and fly from midday on; in the earlier hours of the day, until the fora are filled with the assembly of men, they sit idle. Eagles' feathers devour the feathers of other birds when mixed with them. They say that this bird alone has never been killed by a thunderbolt; for that reason common usage has judged it the armor-bearer of Jupiter.

16| Gaius Marius, in his second consulship, assigned it specially to the Roman legions. Before that it had also been the first of five standards: wolves, minotaurs, horses and boars each went before a single rank. A few years earlier the eagle alone had begun to be carried into the line, the rest being left in camp; Marius abolished them altogether. Since then it has been remarked that there is hardly ever a legion's winter camp where there is not a pair of eagles.

17| The first and second kinds prey not only on quadrupeds of smaller size, but also fight battles with stags. Sitting on the antlers, it shakes into their eyes much dust gathered by rolling about, beating with its wings, until it drives the stag headlong over the cliffs. Nor is one enemy enough for it: there is a fiercer fight with the dragon, and much more uncertain, even though it takes place in the air. The dragon hunts the eagle's eggs with a malignant greed. For this reason the eagle seizes it wherever it is seen; the dragon binds its wings in manifold coils, entangling itself so that it falls down with the eagle.

18| Famous at the city of Sestos is the glory of an eagle: raised by a maiden, it repaid her kindness, at first with birds, then with game, which it brought to her; at last, when she had died, it threw itself onto her kindled pyre and burned up together with her. For this reason the inhabitants made at that place what they call a hero-shrine, named that of Jupiter and the Maiden, since the bird is ascribed to that god.

19| Of vultures the black are the strongest. No one has touched their nests; for that reason there were some who thought they flew in from another world over against ours. This is false: they nest on the highest cliffs; their young are indeed often seen, usually two. Umbricius, the most skilled haruspex of our age, reports that they lay thirteen eggs, that with one of them they purify the remaining eggs and the nest, and afterwards throw it away. Three days beforehand, moreover, they fly to the place where corpses are going to be.

20| The sanqualis bird and the immusulus are a great question for the Roman augurs. Some think the immusulus is the young of a vulture and the sanqualis an ossifragus. Masurius says the sanqualis is an ossifraga, but the immusulus the young of an eagle before its tail turns white. Some have affirmed that they have not been seen in Rome since the augur Mucius; I think, which is more likely, that they are not recognized, in the general neglect of everything.

21| We find sixteen kinds of hawks, among them the aegithus, lame in one foot, of the most favorable augury for marriage affairs and for cattle-keeping; the triorchis, named for the number of its testicles, to which Phemonoe gave the first place in auguries. The Romans call it buteo, and a family was even named after it, when with favorable omen it had settled on a commander's ship. The Greeks call epileus the one that alone appears at every season; the others depart in winter.

22| The distinction of kinds comes from their greed: some seize a bird only from the ground, others only one flitting around trees, others one perched on high, some one flying in the open. And so doves too have learned the dangers from them, and on seeing them settle down or fly up beneath, helping themselves by going against the hawk's nature. On the island of Cerne in Africa, in the ocean, the hawks of the whole of Masaesylia breed on the ground and are born nowhere else, accustomed to those peoples.

23| In the part of Thrace above Amphipolis, men and hawks hunt birds in a kind of partnership. The men rouse the birds out of the woods and reed-beds, and the hawks, flying over them, drive them down again; the fowlers share what is caught with them. It is reported that the hawks catch those sent up into the air for themselves and, when it is the time of capture, invite the men to the opportunity with a cry and a manner of flight. Wolves around the Maeotic marsh do something similar. For unless they have received their share from the fishermen, they tear the nets spread out.

24| Hawks do not eat the hearts of birds. The night hawk is called cybindis, rare even in woods, seeing less by day. It wages deadly war with the eagle, and they are often caught clinging together.

25| The coccyx seems to come from a hawk, changing its shape with the season, since at that time the others do not appear except for very few days. It too, seen for a short time in summer, is not seen afterwards. It is, however, the only one of the hawks without hooked talons, and is not like them in head nor in anything but color, and in its look is rather like a dove; indeed it is even devoured by a hawk, if ever they have appeared together, the only bird of all to be killed by its own kind.

26| It changes its voice also. It comes forward in spring and hides when the Dog Star rises, and between those times it lays in other birds' nests, especially the wood pigeon's, for the most part a single egg, which no other bird does, seldom two. The reason for putting its chicks in is thought to be that it knows itself hated by all birds; for even the little ones attack it. So it supposes that its stock will not be safe for its kind unless it deceives; therefore it makes no nest of its own, though otherwise a timid creature.

27| The mother, then, whose nest has been adulterated, rears the substituted chick. It, greedy by nature, snatches the food from the other chicks, and so grows fat and sleek and wins its nurse over to itself. She delights in its appearance and marvels at herself that she has borne such a one; in comparison with it she condemns her own as strangers and lets them be devoured even before her eyes, until the cuckoo, now able to fly, seizes her too. At that point no bird is compared with it for the sweetness of its flesh.

28| Kites, of the same genus as hawks, differ in size. It has been noted of them that this most rapacious and ever hungry bird never snatches anything edible from funeral dishes, nor at Olympia from the altar, nor even from the hands of those carrying it, except by a mournful omen for the towns of those sacrificing. The same birds seem to have taught the art of steering by the turnings of the tail, nature showing in the sky what was needed on the deep. Kites too lie hidden in the winter months, yet do not depart before the swallow. They are said, moreover, to be afflicted with gout from the solstices on.

29| The first distinction among birds rests chiefly on the feet: for they have either hooked talons, or toes, or are in the class of web-footed birds, such as geese and nearly all water birds. Those with hooked talons feed mostly on flesh alone;

30| crows also on other food, since they fly high and hurl onto rocks or tiles, again and again, a nut whose hardness resists the beak, until they can break it when shattered. The bird itself has an ill-omened chatter, though praised by some. From the rising of Arcturus to the arrival of the swallows it is noted that it is rarely seen in the groves and temples of Minerva, and in some places not at all, as at Athens; it is most ill-omened in the time of its young, that is, after the solstice. Besides, this alone also feeds its young for some time after they are flying.

31| All the rest of the same genus drive their chicks from the nests and force them to fly, as do ravens too, who are not fed on flesh alone either. But they drive their strong young farther away; and so in small villages there are no more than two pairs, and around Crannon in Thessaly one pair always. The parents give place to their offspring.

32| In this bird and the one mentioned above there are certain differences. Ravens breed before the solstice; they also fall sick for sixty days, chiefly from thirst, before the figs ripen in autumn. The crow is seized by disease from that time. Ravens lay, at the most, five. The common people suppose that they lay or couple by the mouth, and therefore that pregnant women, if they have eaten a raven's egg, give birth through the mouth, and altogether give birth with difficulty if they are carried under a roof. Aristotle denies it: by Hercules no more than the ibis in Egypt, but that kissing which is often seen, such as occurs in doves. Ravens alone in auspices seem to have an understanding of their own signs.

33| For when the Median guests were slain, they all flew away from the Peloponnese and the region of Attica. Their worst sign is when they gulp their voice as if strangled.

34| Night birds also have hooked talons, such as owls, the bubo and the ululae. The eyes of all these are dull by day. The bubo, funereal and above all abominated in public auspices, inhabits deserted places, and not only desolate but dire and inaccessible ones, a monster of the night, not vocal with any song but with a groan.

35| And so, in cities or generally seen in the daylight, it is a dire portent. That one perching on the houses of private men was not deadly in a number of cases I know. It never flies where it likes, but is carried off sideways. It entered the very shrine of the Capitol when Sextus Palpellius Hister and Lucius Pedanius were consuls, on account of which the city was purified on the nones of March that year.

36| The incendiary bird is also ill-omened, and we find it recorded in the annals that the city was often purified because of it, as in the consulship of Lucius Cassius and Gaius Marius, the year in which it was purified also because a bubo had been seen. What bird that is is not found nor reported. Some interpret it thus: that incendiary means any bird that appears carrying a coal from altars or hearths; others call it the spinturnix, but what this itself might be among birds I have found no one who said he knew.

37| I notice too that the bird called clivia by the ancients is not known — some call it clamatoria, Labeo prohibitoria — and in Nigidius a bird called super is mentioned, which breaks the eggs of eagles. There are besides very many kinds depicted in the Etruscan discipline, not seen for ages, which it is strange have now failed, when even those that human gluttony ravages are plentiful.

38| Among foreign writers, the one thought to have written most skillfully on auguries is named Hylas. He reports that the owl, the bubo, the woodpecker that hollows trees, the trygon, and the crow come out of the egg tail first, since from the weight of their heads the eggs lie turned about and bring the hinder part of the bodies against the mother to be warmed.

39| The battle of owls against other birds is skillful. Surrounded by a greater multitude, they fight back lying on their backs with their feet, and gathered into a tight mass are wholly protected by beak and talons. The hawk helps them, by a kind of league of nature, and shares the war. Nigidius reports that owls lie dormant for sixty days of winter and have nine voices.

40| There are also small birds with hooked talons, such as the woodpeckers, marked by the surname of Mars and great in auspices. In this class are the hollowers of trees, who climb straight upward in the manner of cats, while these even climb upside down, and by the sound of the bark when struck they perceive that food lies beneath. They alone of birds rear their young in hollows. Wedges driven by a shepherd into their holes are commonly believed to slip out when a certain herb is brought up by them. Trebius is the authority that a nail or wedge driven with however much force into a tree in which one has its nest springs out at once with a crack of the tree, as soon as it has settled upon [the nail or wedge].

41| They themselves are chief among the birds of Latium in auguries, from the king who gave this bird its name. One of their foreknown signs I cannot pass over. On the head of the city praetor Aelius Tubero, as he gave judgment from the tribunal in the forum, one sat so quietly that it was taken in the hand. The seers answered that destruction to the empire was portended if it were let go, but if it were killed, to the praetor. And he tore the bird to pieces at once, and not long afterwards fulfilled the prodigy.

42| Many in this genus also feed on acorns and fruits, but those that eat only flesh do not drink, except the kite, which is itself dire in auguries. Those with hooked talons do not flock together at all, and each preys for itself. Almost all fly high, except the nocturnal ones, and the larger the more so. All have big wings, but a slight body. They walk with difficulty; they seldom perch on rocks, the curve of the talons preventing it.

43| Now let us speak of the second class, which is divided into two kinds, the oscines and the alites. Song of the mouth gave the difference to the former, size to the latter; and so they will take precedence in order also, and among them the peacock tribe surpasses all the rest, in beauty, and in its understanding of it, and its glory. When praised, it spreads its jewel-like colors, most of all with the sun facing it, because they shine more brilliantly so. At the same time, by cupping its tail like a shell, it seeks a certain reflected shadow for the rest of its colors, which also gleam more brightly in shade, and draws together into a cluster all the eyes of its feathers, which it delights to have gazed upon.

44| The same bird, when its tail is lost at yearly turns with the leaves of the trees, hides in shame and mourning until another is born again with the flower. It lives 25 years. It begins to display its colors at the age of three. Authors report this animal to be not only vainglorious but also spiteful, just as the goose is modest, since some have added these traits as well in them, which I do not approve.

45| At Rome the orator Hortensius was the first to kill a peacock for food, at the inaugural banquet of his priesthood. Marcus Aufidius Lurco first began to fatten them, around the period of the latest pirate war, and made from that trade a revenue of sixty thousand sesterces.

46| Next in glory come these watchers of the night of ours, which nature produced to rouse mortals to their work and break their sleep. They know the stars, and mark off the hours by threes in the daytime with their song. They go to bed with the sun, and at the camp's fourth watch call men back to their cares and labor, nor do they let the sun's rising steal upon the unwary, and they announce the coming day by song, and the song itself by the clapping of their sides.

47| They rule their own kind and exercise kingship in whatever house they are in. This is obtained among themselves by fighting, as though they understood why spurs grow on their legs for that purpose, and often there is no end except in dying together. But if the palm has fallen to one, at once in victory he sings and proclaims himself the chief; the defeated hides in silence and bears servitude with difficulty. And yet the common sort, too, walk equally proud, with neck held steep, high with their crests, and alone of birds look often at the sky, raising also the sickle-shaped tail on high. And so they are a terror even to lions, the noblest of wild beasts.

48| Now some of these are born only for wars and constant battles — by which they have even made their native lands famous, Rhodes or Tanagra; second honor has been given to the Melic and Chalcidic breeds — so that the Roman purple plainly confers on the bird as much honor as it deserves.

49| Theirs are the most favorable tripudia; they daily govern our magistrates, and shut up or open their houses to them. They drive on or hold back the Roman fasces, they order battle lines or forbid them, auspices of all the victories won over the whole world. They above all rule the empire of the lands, and in their entrails and fibres are no less pleasing to the gods than rich victims. Their reversed and evening songs have portents too: for by crowing all night they foretold to the Boeotians that famous victory over the Lacedaemonians, the interpretation being drawn that the defeated bird does not sing.

50| Capons cease to crow; this is done in two ways, by burning the loins with white-hot iron, or the lowest part of the legs, then smearing the sore with potter's clay; they fatten more easily thus. At Pergamum every year a spectacle of cocks is given at public expense, like one of gladiators. It is found in the annals that in the territory of Ariminum, in the consulship of Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Catulus, a cock spoke in the villa of Galerius, once, as far as I know.

51| The goose too has a watchful care, attested by the Capitol's defense, at that time when the silence of the dogs betrayed the situation, for which reason the censors let out the feeding of the geese before all else. Indeed there is also the fame of a love at Aegium, for a boy of beloved beauty, by name [….] Olenius, and of Glauce, who played the cithara for King Ptolemy, whom a ram also is reported to have loved at the same time. Understanding of wisdom can seem to be in them too: thus a goose is said to have clung as a constant companion to the philosopher Lacydes, never leaving him, not in public, not in the baths, not by night, not by day.

52| Our countrymen are wiser, who have known them by the goodness of the liver. In force-fed geese it grows to a great size, and when taken out it is increased further by steeping in milk and honey wine. Nor is it without reason a matter of inquiry who discovered so great a good, Scipio Metellus, a man of consular rank, or Marcus Seius, a Roman knight of the same age. But what is agreed is that Messalinus Cotta, son of the orator Messala, discovered the way to roast their webbed feet and to dress them in dishes with cocks' combs; for I will faithfully award to each man's kitchen its palm.

53| It is a wonder in this bird that they come on foot from the Morini all the way to Rome. When weary they are moved forward to the front; so the rest push them on by natural crowding. White geese are another source of revenue, in the feather. In some places they are plucked twice a year, and again clothe themselves with plumage. Softer is the feather nearest the body, and the most praised comes from Germany. The geese there are white, but smaller; they are called gantae.

54| The price of their feather is five denarii per pound. And hence come charges, mostly against the prefects of auxiliaries, when whole cohorts have been sent from the guard post to this fowling; and luxury has advanced so far that without this equipment not even men's necks can now endure.

55| The part of Syria that is called Commagene discovered another use: their fat, in a bronze vessel with cinnamon, buried in a great deal of snow and softened by the icy cold, for the making of a splendid medicine, which is called Commagenum after the people.

56| Of the goose kind are the chenalopeces and the chenerotes, than which Britain knows no more elegant feast, generally smaller than a goose. The tetraones are adorned by their own gloss and perfect blackness, and by the scarlet red on their brows. The other kind of them exceeds vultures in size, whose color too it reproduces, and no bird, except the ostrich, fills a greater weight in body, so enlarged that it is even caught motionless on the ground. The Alps produce them, and the northern region. In aviaries they lose their flavor.

57| They die from stubbornness, with the breath held back. Next to them are the birds that Spain calls slow birds, and Greece otides, condemned as food; for once the marrow has been let out of the bones, disgust at the smell follows at once.

58| The Pygmy race has a truce when the cranes depart, as we said, since they fight against them. Immense is the stretch from which they come, if one reckons it, from the Eastern sea. They agree among themselves when they set out; they fly high to look ahead, choose a leader whom they follow, and have placed in the rear of the column, by turns, some to call out and to hold the flock together by voice.

59| They keep watch at night, holding a small stone in the foot, which, if loosened by sleep and falling, convicts the watcher of carelessness; the others sleep, with the head hidden under the wing, standing on each foot in turn. The leader looks ahead with neck erect and gives warning. The same birds when tamed frolic and perform certain circlings in an unseemly run, even alone.

60| It is certain that, when about to fly across the Pontus, they first of all make for the narrows between the two promontories, Criu Metopon and Carambis, then steady themselves with ballast; when they have crossed the middle, the pebbles are dropped from their feet, and, when they have reached the mainland, the sand from their throat. Cornelius Nepos, who died in the principate of the deified Augustus, when writing that thrushes had begun to be fattened a little before, added that storks were more in favor than cranes, whereas now the latter bird is among those most sought, while no one would wish to have touched the former.

61| From what place storks come, or where they betake themselves, is hitherto undiscovered. That they come from far off is not doubtful, in the same manner as cranes, the one arriving for the winter, the other for the summer. When about to leave they gather in fixed places and, accompanied in such a way that none of their kind is left behind except a captive and enslaved one, they withdraw on a day announced as if by law. No one has seen the column of those departing, though it is clear when it is about to depart, nor their coming, but we see that they have come. Both happen at night, and although they fly over farther or nearer places, they are nevertheless believed never to have arrived anywhere except by night.

62| They call it the Village of Python in Asia, in open plains, where they gather and murmur together, and tear apart the one that has arrived last, and so depart. It has been observed that they are rarely seen there once the Ides of August are past. There are those who affirm that storks have no tongue. So great is the honor given them for destroying serpents that in Thessaly killing one was a capital crime, and the penalty by the laws was the same as for a homicide.

63| Geese and swans also journey on a similar plan, but their flight is seen. In the manner of Liburnian ships they are borne with a beaked rush, cleaving the air more easily so than if they pressed on with a straight front; from behind the column is gradually extended as the wedge widens, and is presented to a generous breeze pushing it on. They lay their necks on those preceding, and take the weary leaders back to the rear. (Storks return to the same nests and in turn support their aged parents.) From the death of swans a mournful song is told, falsely, as I think, by some experiments. The same feed on one another's flesh.

64| But this migration of travellers across seas and lands does not allow the smaller birds, whose nature is similar, to be left out. For however much the size and strength of body of the birds mentioned above may seem to invite it,

65| quails always arrive even before the cranes, a small bird and, when it comes to us, earthbound rather than high-flying. These too fly in in similar fashion, not without danger to sailors, when they have drawn near the land. For they often fall upon the sails, and always at night, and sink the vessels. Their route is by fixed stopping-places. They do not fly with the south wind, a damp and heavier wind of course;

66| Yet they wish to be carried on a breeze because of the weight of their bodies and their small strength — hence that complaint of the flying birds, wrung out by their labor — and so they fly chiefly with the north wind, the ortygometra leading. The first of them approaching land a hawk seizes. When going back from here they always solicit company, and the glottis, the otus and the cychramus are persuaded and go away along with them.

67| The glottis puts out a very long tongue, whence its name. Enticed at first by the journey, it sets out eagerly, but repentance comes upon it in flight, because of the toil, of course: it is irksome to go back unaccompanied, and to follow; and it never goes on more than a day, and abandons the flock at the nearest stopping place. But another is found, left behind the previous year in a similar manner after each single day.

68| The cychramus, more persevering, hurries also to arrive at the lands it desires. And so by night [it] rouses them and reminds them of the journey. The otus is smaller than the bubo, larger than owls, with feathered ears standing out, whence its name too — some call it in Latin axio — an imitator of other birds, and a parasite, and in a way a dancer. It is caught without difficulty, like owls, while another circles round, as it is intent on one man.

69| But if a wind begins to hinder the column with a contrary blast, they take up small weights of stones, or fill the throat with sand, and fly steadied. Poison seed is the most welcome food to quails, for which reason tables have condemned them, and also because it is customary to spit at the sight of them on account of the falling sickness, which they alone of animals suffer besides man.

70| Swallows too depart in the winter months, the only bird of those lacking hooked talons that feeds on flesh. But they depart to neighboring places, following the sunny recesses of the mountains, and they have already been found there naked and plucked of feathers. They are said not to go under the roofs of Thebes, since that city was captured rather often, nor those of Bizye in Thrace, on account of the crimes of Tereus.

71| Caecina of Volaterrae, of the equestrian order, owner of chariot teams, carried off swallows he had caught, taking them with him to the city, and sent them to his friends as messengers of victory, returning to the same nest with the color of the victory smeared on them. Fabius Pictor also reports in his annals that, a Roman garrison being under siege by the Ligustini, a swallow taken from its chicks was brought to him, so that, with a linen thread tied to its foot, he might signify by knots on which day help would arrive and a sally should be made.

72| Blackbirds, thrushes and starlings too depart in the same way to neighboring places. But these do not lose their plumage nor hide, and are often seen where they go to seek winter fodder; and so in Germany thrushes are seen chiefly in winter. More truly the turtle dove hides and loses its feathers. Wood pigeons depart as well; where, in their case too, is uncertain.

73| It is peculiar to the starling kind to fly in flocks and to wheel round in a kind of ball, all pressing toward the center of the column. Of birds the swallow alone has a winding flight of swift speed, for which reasons it is not exposed to the rapacity of other birds. It alone of birds feeds only in flight. There is a great difference in the seasons of birds: some are perennial, as doves; some stay six months, as swallows; some three months, as thrushes and turtle doves; and some depart once they have raised their young, as the galguli and hoopoes.

74| Authors say that every year birds fly to Ilium from Ethiopia and fight at the tomb of Memnon, and for this reason are called Memnonides. That they do the same in Ethiopia every fifth year, around Memnon's palace, Cremutius reports as ascertained by himself. In a similar manner the Meleagrides fight in Boeotia. This is a kind of hen of Africa, humpbacked, speckled with various feathers. They were the last of the foreign birds admitted to the table, because of their unpleasant smell; but the tomb of Meleager made them famous.

75| Birds called Seleucides are those whose coming the inhabitants of Mount Cadmus obtain from Jupiter by prayers, when locusts are laying waste their crops. It is not known where they come from or where they go, and they are never seen except when their protection is needed. The Egyptians too invoke their ibises against the coming of serpents, and the Eleans Myiacoris, the god of flies, when a multitude of them brings pestilence; and they perish immediately after the sacrifice has been favorably made to that god.

76| But in the departure of the birds, owls too are reported to hide for a few days; their kind is said not to be on the island of Crete, and even if one is brought in, to die. For this also is a wonderful difference of nature: she denies one thing to some places and another to others, as she does kinds of crops or shrubs, so also of animals; that they are not born is commonplace, that they die when imported is marvelous. What is that which is adverse to the safety of a single kind, or what is that ill will of nature? Or who has set limits of lands for birds? Rhodes has no eagle.

77| Italy beyond the Po, near the Alps, has Lake Como, pleasant with its tree-planted fields, to which storks do not penetrate, just as within the eighth mile from it the immense flocks of jackdaws, in the neighboring district of the Insubres, do not either; the thieving of silver and gold is especially wonderful in this one bird. The woodpecker of Mars is said not to be in the territory of Tarentum. Lately, and as yet

78| rarely, kinds of magpies marked by long tails, called variae, have begun to be seen from the Apennine toward the city; it is peculiar to all of them to grow bald every year when turnips are sown. Partridges do not cross over the borders of Boeotia into Attica, nor does any bird fly over the temple consecrated to Achilles on the island in the Pontus where he is buried. In the territory of Fidenae near the city storks make neither young nor nest. But into the territory of Volaterrae a great force of wood pigeons flies in from the sea every year.

79| In the temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium at Rome neither flies nor dogs enter. There are many similar things besides, which I wisely omit from time to time in the individual kinds, sparing the reader's boredom, since Theophrastus reports that even doves and peacocks and deer are imported in Asia, and in Cyrenaica vocal frogs.

80| There is another wonder in the oscines. They commonly change color and voice with the season and suddenly become different, which in the larger class of birds only the cranes do; for these turn black with age. The blackbird turns reddish from black, sings in summer, stammers in winter, and is mute around the solstice. Its beak too, in yearlings, is transformed into ivory, at least in the males. In thrushes the color about the neck is varied in summer, in winter all of one color.

81| In nightingales there is a chattering song for 15 days and nights continuously without a break, while the buds of the leaves thicken, in no way the least of birds worthy of wonder. First, such a voice in so small a body, such persistent breath; then, in one bird, a perfect knowledge of music: the sound is delivered modulated, and now is drawn out in a long continuous breath, now varied with a turn, now marked off by a clipped note,

82| coupled by a twisted one, held out by a recalled one, darkened unexpectedly, sometimes murmuring even to itself, full, deep, high, rapid, extended, trilling where it seems good, highest, middle, lowest. And in short, in such tiny throats are all the things which human art has contrived with so many exquisite contrivances of pipes, so that it is not doubtful that this sweetness was foreshown by an effective omen, when it sang in the mouth of the infant Stesichorus. And lest anyone doubt that it is a matter of art, each has several songs, and not the same in all, but each its own.

83| They compete with one another, and the contest is openly spirited. The defeated often ends life by death, the breath failing before the song. Other younger ones practice and receive verses to imitate. The pupil listens with great attention and repeats, and they fall silent by turns: the correction of an error is understood, and in the teacher a certain rebuke.

84| Therefore they have the prices of slaves, and indeed higher than those at which armor-bearers were once procured. I know that one, white besides, which is almost unheard of, was sold for 6,000 sesterces, to be given as a gift to Agrippina, wife of the emperor Claudius. It has now often been seen that birds commanded to sing began to do so and alternated with a concert, just as men have been found who, by putting water into reed pipes set across and breathing into the hole, or by placing a small obstacle with the tongue, gave back the sound of them with indistinguishable likeness.

85| But these so great and so artful trills gradually cease after 15 days, nor so that you could say they are wearied or sated. Soon, as the heat increases, the voice becomes altogether different, neither modulated nor varied; the color too changes. Finally in winter itself the bird is not seen. In their tongues there is not that first thinness which other birds have. They lay in early spring, at most, six eggs.

86| The ficedulae are another matter, for they change shape and color at once. They have this name in autumn, afterwards they are called melancoryphi. So also the erithacus in winter is the same as the phoenicurus in summer. The hoopoe too changes, as the poet Aeschylus reports, a bird otherwise foul in its feeding, with a crest worth seeing, which folds, drawing it together and raising it along the length of the head.

87| The oenanthe indeed has even fixed days of hiding. At the rising of Sirius it hides, and from its setting comes forth, which we may wonder at, on the very days in each case. The chlorion also, which is wholly yellow, not seen in winter, comes forth about the solstices. Blackbirds around Cyllene in Arcadia, and nowhere else, are born white. The ibis about Pelusium alone is black, in all other places white.

88| The oscines, apart from the exceptions, do not readily have young before the spring equinox or after the autumnal one; before the solstice they are doubtful, after the solstice viable.

89| By this most of all the halcyons are notable. The days of their laying are known to the seas and to those who sail. The bird itself is a little larger than a sparrow, in color dark blue and purple only on the lower part, with white feathers mixed in at the neck, and a slender, long beak. Another kind of them is distinguished by size and by song: the smaller sing in reed beds.

90| To see a halcyon is most rare, and only at the setting of the Pleiades and around the solstices or midwinter, when it sometimes flies round a ship and at once goes off into hiding. They breed at midwinter, on days which are called halcyon days, the sea being calm and navigable throughout them, most of all the Sicilian. They make their nests in the seven days before midwinter and lay in as many days following.

91| Their nests have an admirable character, of the shape of a ball slightly raised, with a very narrow mouth, like large sponges. They cannot be cut through with iron, but are broken by a strong blow, like the dry foam of the sea. Nor is it found from what they are put together; they think from the spines of thorny fish, for they live on fish. They go up rivers also. They lay five eggs. Gulls nest on rocks, mergi also in trees. They lay at most three, but gulls in summer, mergi at the beginning of spring.

92| The halcyon's nest in its shape reminds us of the skill of the rest as well, and in no other respect are the talents of birds more to be admired. Swallows build with mud and strengthen it with straw. If ever there is a lack of mud, they wet their wings with much water and sprinkle dust; the nest itself they cover with soft feathers and tufts to warm the eggs, and at the same time so that it may not be hard for the tender chicks. In rearing they alternate in bringing food with perfect fairness. With remarkable cleanliness they carry out the droppings of the chicks, and when they are older teach them to turn around and discharge their fullness outside.

93| There is another kind of swallows, rustic and of the fields, which rarely in houses, differing in shape, but of the same material, build nests wholly turned upward, with the opening drawn out into a narrow neck and a capacious belly, wonderful in skill, both fit for concealing the chicks and soft for lining.

94| At the Heracleotic mouth in Egypt they set against the straying Nile a mound made by the continuous joining of their nests, impregnable, of about one stadium in length, which could not be completed by human work. In the same Egypt, near the town of Coptos, lies an island that is sacred to Isis, which, lest the same river tear it away, they fortify by labor, as the spring days begin strengthening its prow with chaff and straw, working on through the nights for three days with such toil that it is agreed many die at the work; and this service returns for them always with the year. There is a third kind of them: they hollow out the banks and so nest within.

95| (The chicks of these, burned to ashes, cure the deadly sickness of the throat and many other diseases of the human body.) They do not make nests, and they move away many days before, if the river is going to rise and reach them.

96| In the genus of the vitiparrae there is one whose nest of dry moss is so completed in a perfect ball that no entrance can be found. The acanthyllis, as it is called, weaves one of the same shape from flax. One of the woodpeckers hangs its nest from a twig at the first branches, like a cup, so that no quadruped can approach. They affirm that the galguli themselves take sleep hanging by their feet, because they hope thus to be safer.

97| Indeed it is now common to all to choose prudently the platforms of branches to support the nest, to vault it against rain or cover it with dense foliage. In Arabia a bird is called the cinnamolgus, nesting in twigs of cinnamon; the natives knock the nests down with lead-tipped arrows for the sake of the merchandise. Among the Scythians a bird of the size of the otis lays two eggs in a hare's skin always hung from the tops of branches.

98| When magpies sense that a man has noticed the nest too carefully, they carry the eggs across to another place. In those birds whose toes are not suited to grasping and carrying eggs, this is reported to be done in a wonderful manner. For having placed a twig over two eggs and joined it with the glue of the belly, the neck set underneath in the middle, they carry them off elsewhere balanced equally on each side.

99| Nor is the skill less in those which make their cradles on the ground, being kept by the weight of the body from seeking the heights. The merops is so called, feeding its parents, who are hidden away; it is pale within in the color of its feathers, dark blue above, and reddish in the front part. It nests in a cave dug to the depth of six feet.

100| Partridges fortify their lair with thorn and bush so well that they are amply walled against a wild beast. They heap over the eggs a soft covering with dust and do not brood in the place where they laid: lest any too frequent visiting be suspected, they move them elsewhere. These females indeed deceive their mates too, since in the intemperance of lust the males break their eggs, so that the females may not be detained by brooding. Then the males fight among themselves from desire for the females; they say the defeated one submits to mating.

101| Trogus says that quails do this too, and sometimes cocks, but that among partridges the wild males are mounted by the tame ones, and new or defeated males indiscriminately. They are also caught by the pugnacity of this same lust, as the leader of the whole flock comes out to battle against the fowler's decoy. When he is caught another comes forward, and then one after another. Again, around the time of conception, the females are caught coming out against the fowlers' female, to drive her off by quarreling.

102| Nor in any other animal is the work of lust equal. If females stand facing the males, they become pregnant from the breeze blowing from them, and gaping with the tongue put out they glow with heat during that time. They conceive also from the breath of birds flying over, often from merely hearing the male's voice, and so greatly does lust overcome even the love of offspring that the one brooding stealthily and in hiding, when she has perceived the fowler's female approaching her mate, calls him back and recalls him and even offers herself to lust. They are carried on indeed by such madness that they often sit on the heads of fowlers, blinded by the impulse.

103| If such a man begins to approach the nest, the mother runs out to his feet, pretending to be very heavy or lame in the loins, and suddenly in her run or in some short flight falls, as if with a broken wing or feet, but runs out again, escaping him just as he is about to seize her, and frustrating his hope, until she leads him away in a different direction from the nests. The same, in fright, free and unoccupied by maternal care, lies on her back in a furrow and covers herself with a clod gripped in her feet. The life of partridges is thought to last even to sixteen years.

104| After these, the habits of doves are most noticed, on a similar principle. There is in them very great chastity, and adultery is known to neither. They do not violate faith to a mate and keep their common home. Except a bachelor or a widow, none leaves the nest. And they endure their domineering males, sometimes even unjust ones, for there is suspicion of adultery, though it is not natural: then the throat is full of complaint and there are savage blows with the beak, soon afterward kissing in atonement and flattery around the entreaties of love in frequent circles of the feet.

105| The love of offspring is equal in both; often from this cause there is rebuke when the female goes more slowly to the chicks. To the one giving birth the male gives comfort and service. To the chicks at first they spit into the mouth saltier earth gathered in the throat, preparing them in time for food. It is peculiar to this kind and to turtle doves, when they drink, not to bend the neck back, and to drink abundantly in the manner of beasts of burden.

106| We have authorities that wood pigeons live to the thirtieth year, some to the fortieth, with one trouble only, of the talons — which is also the sign of old age — and which are cut back without harm. The song is alike in all and is made of the same triple verse, and besides with a groan at the close; in winter they are mute, from spring vocal. Nigidius thinks that if the wood pigeon is called by its name while it is brooding eggs under a roof, it leaves its nest. They lay after the solstice.

107| Doves and turtle doves live eight years each. The sparrow, on the contrary, has the shortest life, and its lustfulness is equal to it. Males are said not to last longer than a year, the proof being that at the beginning of spring no blackness appears on the beak, which begins from summer.

108| For females the span is somewhat longer. But doves have a certain understanding even of glory: you would believe they knew their colors and the arrangement of their variety; indeed it is sought also in their flight: to clap in the sky and furrow it in various ways. In this display they are offered as if bound to the hawk, their wings entangled by the noise, which is forced out only by the very shoulders of the wings, otherwise in free flight much swifter. The robber watches hidden by foliage and seizes the bird rejoicing in its very glory.

109| For this reason the bird called tinnunculus is to be kept with them; for it defends them and terrifies hawks by natural power so far that they flee its sight and voice. For this reason doves have a special love for them, and they say that if they are buried in the four corners in new pots smeared over, the doves do not change their abode — which some have sought also by gold, cutting the joints of the wings, with wounds not otherwise harmful —, though it is otherwise a wide-ranging bird. For they have an art of coaxing one another and seducing others, and returning more numerous in company by theft.

110| Indeed they have even been go-betweens in great affairs, letters tied to their feet at the siege of Mutina when Decimus Brutus sent them to the camp of the consuls. What did rampart and watchful siege, and even nets stretched across the river, profit Antony, with the messenger going through the sky? And many go mad with love of them. Over their roofs they build towers for them and recite the nobility and origins of individual birds, by a custom now old. Lucius Axius, a Roman knight, before the civil war of Pompey, sold single pairs for 400 denarii, as Marcus Varro reports. Indeed they have even made a district famous in Campania, where the largest are thought to grow.

111| Their flight leads one to consider the other birds too. In all other animals the gait is fixed and of one kind and proper to each in its own genus; birds alone are borne by varied courses both on earth and in air. Some walk, as crows; others hop, as sparrows and blackbirds; they run, as partridges and woodcocks; they throw their feet before them, as storks and cranes. They spread their wings and, hanging, beat them at long intervals, others more often, but only the first feathers,

112| others beat the whole sides; some indeed fly with them for the most part pressed together, and having struck the air once, some with a double stroke, are borne on: as if pressing it enclosed they shoot themselves upward, straight, or downward. You might think some were thrust, or again that these fall from a height, those leap. Ducks alone, and whatever are of the same kind, raise themselves at once on high and from the spot seek the sky, and this even out of water. And so, fallen into the pits in which we hunt wild beasts, they alone escape.

113| The vulture and nearly all the heavier ones do not fly up unless let go from a run or from some higher heap; they are steered by the tail. Some look around, others bend the neck, and none eats what they have seized with their feet. Many do not fly without voice, or on the contrary are always silent in flight. Upright, prone, slanting to the sides, face downward, some even on the back, they are borne, so that if several kinds are seen together they seem not to move in the same nature.

114| Those fly most which are apodes, because they lack use of feet, called cypseli by others, in the likeness of swallows. They nest on crags. These are the ones seen over the whole sea, and never do ships recede from land in so long and so continuous a course that apodes do not flit around them. Other kinds settle and perch; these have no rest except in the nest: they either hang or lie.

115| Their wits too are equally varied, above all in feeding. Some are called caprimulgi, in the look of a larger blackbird, thieves by night; for by day they lack sight. They enter the stalls of shepherds and fly to the udders of goats for the sake of sucking the milk, by which wrong the udder withers and blindness comes upon the goats they have so milked. The platea is named for flying to those which plunge into the sea and seizing their heads with a bite until it wrests away the catch. The same, when it has filled itself with devoured shellfish, vomits them cooked by the heat of the belly and so picks out the edible parts from them, casting out the shells.

116| Farmyard hens have also a religious sense. After laying an egg they bristle and shake themselves, and, turned about, purify themselves, or with some straw purify themselves and the eggs. Goldfinches, smallest of birds, do as bidden, not by voice only, but with feet and mouth in place of hands. There is a bird which imitates the lowing of cattle, called taurus in the territory of Arelate, otherwise small. A bird named anthus, too, driven from its grass fodder by the coming of horses, imitates the neighing of horses, avenging itself in this way.

117| Above all they reproduce human voices, parrots even conversing. India sends this bird, calling it the siptace, green over its whole body, set off only by a vermilion collar at the neck. It greets emperors and pronounces the words it is given, especially wanton in wine. Its head has the same hardness as its beak. When it is learning to speak, it is struck with an iron rod; otherwise it does not feel the blows. When it flies down, it catches itself on its beak, leans on it, and so makes itself lighter for the weakness of its feet.

118| Less renowned, because it does not come from far, but of more distinct talkativeness, is a certain kind of magpie. They love the words they speak and do not merely learn them, but, practicing within themselves with care and thought, they do not hide their intentness. It is agreed that they die when defeated by the difficulty of a word, and unless they hear the same words from time to time they are deceived in memory, and when searching are wonderfully cheered if in the meantime they hear that word. Nor is their form common, though not to be gazed at: they have comeliness enough in the appearance of human speech. But they say that others cannot learn besides those of the kind that feed on acorns,

119| and among them more easily those with five toes on their feet, and not even these except in the first two years of life. All that imitate human speech have broader tongues, each in its own kind.

120| Yet this has happened in nearly all: Agrippina, wife of Claudius Caesar, had a thrush imitating the speech of men, which had never been before. When I was publishing this, the young Caesars also had a starling, and likewise nightingales, teachable in Greek and Latin speech, and besides practicing constantly and speaking new things every day, in even longer connected sentences. They are taught in private and where no other voice is mixed in, with someone sitting by who often says what he wants stored in their memory, and coaxing them with food.

121| Let ravens too be given their due, attested also by the indignation of the Roman people, not only by their awareness. In the principate of Tiberius, from a brood hatched above the temple of the Castors a chick flew down into the neighboring cobbler's shop, commended also by religious feeling to the master of the workshop. Early accustomed to speech, flying out every morning onto the Rostra, facing the forum, it saluted Tiberius, then Germanicus and Drusus Caesar by name, and then the Roman people passing by, afterwards returning to the shop, wonderful in its constant service over several years. The proprietor of the nearest cobbler's shop killed it, whether out of a neighbor's rivalry or, as he wished it to appear, in sudden anger because its droppings had left a stain on his shoes; and this caused such consternation among the common people that he was first driven out of that district and soon put to death, and the funeral of the bird was celebrated with innumerable attendants, a bier spread over the shoulders of two Ethiopians, a flute-player going before and garlands of every kind up to the pyre, which had been built on the right of the Appian Way, at its second milestone, in the field called that of Rediculus.

123| So sufficient a just cause did the ingenuity of a bird seem to the Roman people for funeral rites, or for the punishment of a Roman citizen, in a city in which no one of many leading men had had his funeral escorted, and in which no one had avenged the death of Scipio Aemilianus, after Carthage and Numantia had been destroyed by him.

124| This was done in the consulship of Marcus Servilius and Gaius Cestius, on the fifth day before the kalends of April. Now too there was in the city of Rome, as I am publishing this, a crow belonging to a Roman knight, from Baetica, first wonderful in being quite black in color, then uttering several words strung together and constantly learning more and more. Nor is the recent fame of Craterus, surnamed Monoceros, in the region of Erizena in Asia, to be omitted, hunting by the work of ravens, in that he carried them into the woods sitting on his little horn and his shoulders; they tracked and drove the game, a habit being brought to such a point that even wild they accompanied him as he went out.

125| Some have thought it should be handed down to memory that one was seen, through thirst, heaping stones into a pitcher of a monument, in which rainwater remained but could not be reached; and so, being afraid to go down into it, it raised by such a heap as much water as would suffice for its drinking.

126| Nor will I pass over the Diomedian birds. Juba calls them cataractae, reporting that their teeth and eyes are of fiery colour, the rest white. They always have two leaders: one leads the column, the other brings up the rear. They hollow pits with the beak, then cover them with wickerwork and cover it with the earth previously dug out; in these they breed. All the pits have two doors: one faces the east, by which they go out to pasture, the other the west, by which they return. When about to discharge the belly they always fly up and against the wind.

127| These are seen in one place only in the whole world, on the island that we have said is renowned for Diomedes' tomb and shrine, opposite the coast of Apulia, resembling coots. Foreign strangers they harass with clamor, only to Greeks do they fawn, with a wonderful discrimination, as if granting this to the race of Diomedes, and every day they bathe that shrine with full throat and dripping wings and purify it, whence the origin of the fable that Diomedes' companions were changed into their shapes.

128| It must not be omitted, when we discuss intelligence, that among birds swallows are unteachable, and among land animals mice, while elephants do what they are ordered, lions submit to the yoke, in the sea seals and so many kinds of fish grow tame.

129| Birds drink by suction, those of them with long necks pausing and with the head thrown back as if pouring it into themselves; the porphyrio alone drinks by biting. The same is of a peculiar kind, dipping all its food in water time and again, then bringing it with the foot to the beak as with a hand. The most praised are in Commagene. Their beaks and their very long legs are red.

130| This is true also of the himantopus, much smaller, although of the same height of legs. It is born in Egypt. It stands on three toes. Its chief food is flies. Its life in Italy is a few days. All the heavier birds feed on grain; the high-flying ones on flesh alone; among water birds the mergi, accustomed to gulp greedily even what other birds give back.

131| The onocrotali have a likeness to swans and would not be thought to differ at all, were there not in the very throat a kind of second stomach. Into this the insatiable creature heaps everything, so that its capacity is wonderful. Then, when the plunder is finished, it gradually returns it from there into the mouth and carries it back into the true belly in the manner of a ruminant. Northern Gaul, nearest the ocean, sends these.

132| In the Hercynian forest of Germany we have heard of unseen kinds of birds, whose feathers shine like fires at night. In the others nothing worth recording occurs beyond fame made by distance: the phalerides in Seleucia of the Parthians and in Asia, the most praised of water birds, again the phasianae in Colchis — they lower and raise a pair of ears of feather —, the Numidicae in the part of Africa called Numidia; and all are now in Italy.

133| Apicius taught that the tongue of the phoenicopterus is of outstanding flavor, he who was the deepest gulf of all spendthrifts. The attagen, most famous as Ionian, vocal otherwise but dumb when caught, once reckoned among rare birds, is now in Gaul and Spain too. It is caught also about the Alps, where also the phalacrocoraces are, a bird peculiar to the Balearic islands, as the pyrrhocorax is to the Alps, black with a yellow beak, and the lagopus, of especial flavor. Its feet, with a hare's fur, gave it this name, white in the rest, of the size of doves.

134| It is not easy to eat it outside that land, since it is neither tamed in life and its body decays very quickly. There is also another of the same name, differing from quails only in size, most agreeable at table with its saffron-colored grease. Egnatius Calvinus, prefect of the Alps, has reported that he saw there the ibis, peculiar to Egypt.

135| In the civil wars of Bedriacum there came into Italy across the Po new birds too — for so they are still called —, in appearance of thrushes, a little below doves in size, pleasing in taste. The Balearic islands send a porphyrio even nobler than the one mentioned above. There too the buteo, of the hawk kind, is in honor at the table, and likewise the vibiones; so they call the smaller crane.

136| Pegasi, birds with horse's head, and griffins, with an eared hook of the beak, I think fabulous, the former in Scythia, the latter in Ethiopia. And I think the tragopan too, about which many affirm, larger than an eagle, with curved horns at the temples, of rusty color, with only the head red. Nor will the Sirens win belief, although Dinon, father of the celebrated author Clitarchus, affirms that they are in India and that those whom they have weighed down with sleep they tear apart, lulled by their song.

137| He who believes those things would surely not deny that serpents, by licking his ears, gave Melampus understanding of the speech of birds, or the things Democritus reports, naming birds from whose mingled blood a serpent is born, which whoever has eaten will understand the conversations of birds, and what he recounts privately about the one bird, the crested lark, even without these, in the immense labyrinth of life around auguries. The scopes are named by Homer as a kind of bird:

138| neither could I easily conceive in mind their satyr-like movements when they lie in wait, recorded by most, nor are the birds themselves now known, wherefore it will be better to have discoursed on those acknowledged.

139| The Delians began to fatten hens, whence arose the plague of devouring fat birds greasy in their own bodies. I find this first excepted in the ancient prohibitions of banquets by the law of the consul Gaius Fannius, eleven years prior to the third Punic War, that nothing winged should be served except one hen that was not fattened, which provision, then transferred, has gone through all the laws.

140| And a side road was found to defeat this: to feed cocks also on food soaked in milk; they are approved as much more agreeable so. Females, indeed, are not all chosen for fattening, nor except those with fat skin on the neck. Afterward came the arts of the kitchens, that the haunches be displayed, that they be divided into backs, that, spread out from one foot, they should fill the serving-trays. The Parthians too gave cooks their ways. Yet in this dealing nothing is pleasing whole, the haunch praised in one place, the breast alone elsewhere.

141| Aviaries were first established, with birds of all kinds shut in, by Marcus Laenius Strabo of Brundisium, of the equestrian order. From him we began to confine in a prison creatures to which nature had assigned the sky. Yet most notable in this memory is the dish of Clodius Aesopus, the tragic actor, valued at 100,000 sesterces, in which he served birds vocal with some song or human speech,

142| bought at 6,000 sesterces each, induced by no other sweetness than that he might eat in them an imitation of man, not even respecting his own earnings, those fat and deserved by voice, worthy indeed of the son by whom, as we said, pearls were devoured, yet not so that I would wish to make a true judgment of shamefulness between the two, except that it is less to have dined on the greatest riches of nature than on the tongues of men.

143| The generation of birds seems simple, though it too has its own wonders, since quadrupeds also lay eggs, chameleons, lizards and those we have mentioned [….], likewise serpents. Of winged creatures, however, those that have hooked talons are infertile. The cenchris alone of these lays above four eggs. Nature gave this to the class of birds, that their timid ones should be more fertile than their brave. Ostriches, hens and partridges [soli] lay the most. Birds couple in two ways, the female sitting on the ground, as in hens, or standing, as in cranes.

144| Some eggs are white, as those of doves and partridges; some pale, as those of water birds; some marked with spots, as those of the meleagrides; some of a red color, as those of pheasants and the cenchris. Within, however, every egg of birds is of two colors, in water birds more yellow than white, and that itself more sallow than in the others; that of fishes is of one color, with nothing white in it.

145| The eggs of birds are brittle from heat, those of serpents tough from cold, those of fishes soft from the moisture. Those of water creatures are round, the rest generally pointed at the top. They come out from the roundest part of themselves as they are laid, with a soft shell, but one hardening at once in whatever portions they emerge. Horatius Flaccus thinks that oblong eggs are of more pleasing flavor. The rounder ones produce a female, the others a male. The navel of eggs is at the apex, like a drop standing out on the shell.

146| Some couple at every season, as hens, and lay, except in the two midwinter months. Of these the young hens lay more than old ones, but smaller, and in the same clutch the first and last. The fecundity is so great that some lay sixty, some daily, some twice a day, some so much that they die exhausted. Hadrian hens have the highest praise.

147| Doves lay ten times a year, some even eleven times, in Egypt indeed even in the midwinter month. Swallows and blackbirds and wood pigeons and turtle doves lay twice a year, other birds generally once. Thrushes, nesting with mud on the tops of trees almost in a woven mass, breed in retirement. From coupling, in 10 days the eggs ripen in the womb, but hens and doves, when harassed by a feather plucked out or some other like injury, take longer.

148| In all eggs in the middle of the yolk is a small thing like a drop of blood, which they think is the heart of birds, supposing it to be generated first in the whole body: in the egg at least that drop leaps and throbs. The creature itself takes bodily form from the white liquid of the egg. Its food is in the yolk. In all, within, the head is larger than the whole body, the eyes compressed and larger than the head. As the chick grows, the white turns to the middle, and the yolk is poured around it.

149| If the egg is moved on the twentieth day, the voice of the creature, now alive inside the shell, is heard. From that time it grows feathers, lying so that its head is over the right foot and its right wing over the head. The yolk gradually fails. All birds are born feet first, contrary to the other animals.

150| Some hens lay all their eggs double and sometimes hatch twins, as Cornelius Celsus is authority, one larger; some deny that twins are hatched at all. They forbid setting under a hen more than twenty-five to be brooded. They begin to lay from midwinter. The best laying is before the spring equinox. Those hatched after the solstice do not reach the proper size, and fall short by so much the later they came forth.

151| It is most useful to brood eggs laid within ten days; old or fresher ones are infertile. They ought to be set in an odd number. On the fourth day after they began to be brooded, if, against the light, holding the egg by its tip with the hand below, a clear and uniform color shows through, they are thought to be sterile, and others must be substituted for them. There is also a test in water: the empty one floats, and so those that sink, that is, full ones, they wish set under. They forbid testing by shaking, since they do not breed when the vital veins are confused.

152| The beginning of brooding is given after the new moon, because those begun earlier do not come on. They are hatched faster in hot days; therefore in summer they bring out the brood on the nineteenth day, in winter on the 25th. If it thunders during brooding the eggs perish; and they are spoiled by hearing the voice of a hawk. A remedy against thunder is an iron nail placed under the straw of the eggs, or earth from a plough.

153| Some indeed produce young even without brooding, by nature's own accord, as in the dung heaps of Egypt. A witty thing is found about a certain drinker at Syracuse, who was accustomed to drink so long until, with the earth covering them, eggs brought forth their young.

154| Indeed they are brought to perfection even by man. Julia Augusta, in her first youth, pregnant with Tiberius Caesar by Nero, when she very much desired to bear a male child, used this girlish augury, warming an egg in her bosom and, when she had to put it down, handing it to her nurse through her bosom so that the warmth might not be interrupted; and she is reported not to have prophesied falsely. Perhaps from this was lately invented the practice of laying eggs in a warm place on chaff and warming them with a modest fire, a man turning them, and the brood likewise bursting forth from there on a fixed day.

155| A certain art of a poultry-keeper is reported, who said what would come from each egg. It is told too that when a hen died, their mates were seen taking turns succeeding to her place and doing the rest in the manner of a brooding mother, and abstaining from crowing. Beyond all is the wonder at duck eggs set under hens and hatched: first the hen not plainly recognizing the brood, then, uncertain, anxiously calling them together with clucking, finally lamenting around the pools of the pond as the chicks plunge in, nature leading.

156| The good breeding of hens is judged by an upright comb, sometimes also double, black feathers, a reddish mouth, and unequal toes, sometimes with one set crosswise above four toes. For sacred rites those with yellow beak and feet are not thought pure, for secret rites black ones. There is also a kind of dwarfs, not infertile among them, which is not so in any other kind of birds; but in those with spurs, fecundity is rare and brooding harmful to the eggs.

157| Most hostile to every kind is the pip, especially between the time of harvest and vintage. The remedy is hunger, and lying in smoke, provided it is made from laurel or the herb sabina, a feather inserted crosswise through the nostrils and moved every day; food is garlic with spelt, or soaked with water in which an owl has been steeped, or boiled with the seed of the white vine, and certain other things.

158| Doves kiss, by their own rite, before coupling. They generally lay two eggs, nature so ordering that some have more frequent broods, others more numerous. The wood pigeon and the turtle dove lay three at most and not more than twice in spring, and that only if the earlier brood has been spoiled; and although they have laid 3, they never rear more than 2. The third is fruitless; they call it urinum. The wood pigeon female broods from after midday to morning, the male for the rest.

159| Doves always bring forth one male and one female, the male first and the female on the next day. In that kind both brood, the male by day, the female by night. They hatch on the 20th day, and lay on the fifth day from coupling. In summer indeed they sometimes rear three pairs in two months, for they hatch on the 18th day and conceive at once; wherefore among the chicks eggs are often found, and some fly out, others break forth. The chicks themselves then breed at five months.

160| And the females themselves, if there is no male, mount one another equally and lay fruitless eggs from which nothing is produced, which the Greeks call hypenemia.

161| The peahen lays from her third year; in the first year one egg or two, in the next four or five, in the others twelve, not more, laying with pauses of two or three days, and three times a year if the eggs are set to be brooded by hens. The males break them from desire for the brooding females; wherefore they lay at night and in hiding places, or roosting on high, but unless received in soft bedding they are broken. Single males suffice for five mates each. When there are one or two females, fecundity is spoiled by lustfulness. The brood is hatched in three times nine days, or later, on the thirtieth.

162| Geese mate in water, and lay in spring or, should they have mated in midwinter, after the solstice, nearly 40, twice a year if hens hatch the first brood; otherwise the most eggs 16, the fewest 7. If anyone steals them, they lay until they burst. They do not hatch the eggs of others.

163| It is most useful to set 8 or 11 to brood. Only the females brood, for thirty days, or if the weather is milder, for 25. For their chicks the nettle is deadly by touch, and no less their greed, now from too great fullness, now by their own strength, when, having seized the root in the bite and often trying to pull it out, they snap their own necks. A remedy against the nettle is their root, placed under the straw after brooding.

164| There are three kinds of ardeolae: leucon, asterias, pelion. These are distressed in coupling; the males indeed, with screaming, pour blood even from their eyes. The pregnant females lay with no less difficulty.

165| The eagle broods for thirty days, and so do the larger birds generally; the smaller for twenty, as the kite and hawk. The kite generally never lays more than three, the one called aegolios four, the raven sometimes five. They brood the same number of days. The male feeds the crow while brooding. The magpie lays nine, the melancoryphus above 20, always in an odd number, nor have any others more: so much greater is fecundity in the small. The chicks of the swallow are blind at first, and of nearly all with a more numerous brood.

166| Fruitless eggs, which we called hypenemia, females conceive among themselves either by the imagining of mutual lust or from dust, and not doves only, but hens, partridges, peahens, geese, chenalopeces. They are sterile, and smaller, and of less pleasing flavor, and wetter. Some think they are also generated by wind, for which reason they call them zephyria as well. Urina, however, are produced only in spring when brooding has been abandoned, and others have called them cynosura.

167| Eggs steeped in vinegar are softened so far that they pass through rings. It is most useful to keep them in lomentum, or in winter in chaff, in summer in bran. They are believed to be emptied by salt.

168| Of winged creatures only the bat bears live young, and it alone has membranous wings. The same alone of winged creatures nurses with milk, putting its teats to them. It bears twins; it flits about, embracing its infants and carrying them with it. It is also reported to have a single hip joint. In food gnats are most welcome to it.

169| Again, among land animals, serpents lay eggs, of which nothing has yet been said. They couple by embrace, so wound about themselves that they may be thought one two-headed creature. The male viper thrusts his head into the female's mouth, which she gnaws off in the sweetness of pleasure.

170| Of land animals the same alone brings forth eggs within itself, of one color and soft, like fish. On the third day it hatches the young inside the womb, then each day bears one, about 20 in number. And so the rest, impatient of delay, burst through the sides when the parent is killed. Other serpents brood interwoven eggs in the earth and hatch the brood in the following year. Crocodiles brood in turns, male and female. But let the generation of the other land animals also be given.

171| Of two-footed creatures man alone bears live young. For man alone there is repentance of the first coupling, an augury indeed of a life from an origin to be repented. In other animals the couplings are fixed by times of the year, in man, as has been said, at all hours of day and night; others have satiety in coupling, man almost none.

172| Messalina, wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking this a royal palm, chose for that contest the most notorious of the prostitutes, a slave woman who sold herself for pay, and outdid her day and night in the twenty-fifth act of intercourse. In the human race there are for males these byways of lust, all devised in outrage against nature, and for females abortions. How much more harmful in this respect than wild beasts we are! Hesiod has reported that men are more eager for love in winter, women in summer.

173| Elephants, camels, tigers, lynxes, the rhinoceros, the lion, the dasypus and rabbits, whose genitals face backward, couple turned away from each other. Camels even seek solitude, or at least privacy, and one cannot intervene without disaster; they couple the whole day, and they alone of all. In the quadruped kinds with solid hoof, scent excites the males. Dogs, seals and wolves also turn away, and in the middle of coupling cohere even against their will.

174| Of the dasypodes mentioned above, for the most part the females mount first, in the rest the males. Bears, as has been said, lie spread out in human fashion, hedgehogs both standing embraced with one another, cats with the male standing and the female lying beneath, foxes thrown on their sides and the female embracing the male. The females of bulls and stags do not tolerate force; for that reason they keep walking while they conceive. Stags pass in turn to other females and return to the earlier. Lizards, like those without feet, know love by twining around.

175| All animals, the greater in body, the less fertile. Elephants, camels and horses bear single young; the acanthis, the smallest bird, twelve. Those that bear the most give birth soonest. The larger the animal, the longer it is formed in the womb. Those whose spans of life are longer are carried longer, and the age of those growing is not timely for generating.

176| Those with solid hooves bear single young; those with cloven hooves bear twins too; those whose foot is divided into toes bear more numerous young. But all the former produce completed offspring, these unformed, in which kind are lionesses and she-bears; and the fox gives birth to something even more shapeless than those mentioned above, and it is rare to see her giving birth. Afterward all these warm and shape their young by licking. They bear four at most. Dogs, wolves, panthers and thoes produce blind young.

177| Of dogs there are several kinds. Laconian dogs, male and female, breed in the eighth month; the bitches carry for 60 days, and at most 3 more. Other bitches also submit to coupling at six months. All conceive from a single coupling. Those that have conceived before the right time keep their pups blind longer, and all for the same number of days. They are thought to lift the leg when urinating generally at six months; that is a sign of completed strength. Females do the same sitting.

178| The litters are twelve in the most numerous, otherwise five or six, sometimes single, which they think portentous, as when all males or all females are born. They bear males first, and in the rest alternate. They are covered from the sixth month after the birth. Laconian bitches bear eight. In that kind the males have a peculiar lustfulness by labor. Laconian dogs live ten years, females twelve, other kinds 15 years, sometimes even 20, and they do not breed through their whole life, generally ceasing from the twelfth.

179| Cats and ichneumons are in the rest like dogs. They live six years. Dasypodes bear every month and conceive again while pregnant, like hares. They conceive immediately after birth; they conceive although the teats are dried by the young. They bear blind young. Elephants, as we said, bear single young the size of a three-month-old calf. Camels carry for 12 months; from their third year they bear in spring, and conceive again a year after the birth.

180| Mares they think are usefully covered only after the third year, or one year after foaling, and they force them unwilling. She-asses are believed to conceive most easily even on the seventh day. They advise cutting the manes of mares so that they submit to asses' coupling through lowness; for those with flowing manes are proud of their glory. After coupling they alone of animals run against the north wind or the south, depending on whether they have conceived a male or a female. At once they change color, with redder hair, or whatever it is, fuller; by this sign they stop admitting, even if willing. Nor does foaling hinder some from work, and pregnant mares deceive. We find that a pregnant mare of Echecrates the Thessalian won at Olympia.

181| They report that horses, dogs and pigs seek coupling in the morning, but that the females are more careful in coaxing after midday. Mares that are broken come into heat 60 days before the herd mares; swine alone pour foam from the mouth in coupling; the boar, on hearing the voice of a sow in heat, if not admitted, takes no food and wastes to leanness, and the females become so wild that they tear a man, especially one dressed in white. That frenzy is soothed by vinegar sprinkled on the genitals. The eagerness for coupling is thought to arise also from foods,

182| as rocket for a man, onion for cattle. It is a marvel that those of wild animals that are tamed do not conceive, like geese, boars only slowly, and stags only if reared from infancy. Pregnant quadrupeds ward off love, except the mare and the sow; but only the dasypus and the hare conceive again while pregnant.

183| All animals that bring forth live young bring them forth head first, the offspring turned about at the birth, otherwise laid out in the womb. Quadrupeds are carried with legs stretched out lengthwise and applied to their own belly; man is rolled up on himself with the nose set between the two knees.

184| Molae, of which we spoke before, they think are generated when a woman has conceived not from a male but from herself alone. Therefore they are not animated either, because it is not from two, and they have that life by themselves, nourishing, which falls to plants and trees. Of all that bear completed young, swine alone produce numerous offspring, for more is against the nature of solid-hoofed or cloven-hoofed animals.

185| Above all is the offspring of mice, not to be told without hesitation, although on the authority of Aristotle and of the soldiers of Alexander the Great. Their generation is said to consist in licking, not coupling. They have reported 120 born from one, and among the Persians pregnant ones found in the belly of the parent.

186| And they think they become pregnant by tasting salt. And so it ceases to be a wonder whence so great a force of field mice ravages the harvests, in which this also is hidden as yet, in what way that multitude suddenly dies. For neither are they found dead, nor is there anyone who has dug up a mouse in the field in winter. Very many thus come into the Troad and have already driven the inhabitants out from there. Their increase is in droughts. They say also that a little worm is generated in the head of those about to die. The mice of Egypt have hard hair like hedgehogs. The same go on two feet, like the Alpine ones too.

187| When animals of different kinds have coupled, they breed only if they have an equal time of birth. That lizards of the quadrupeds that produce eggs give birth by the mouth, as is commonly believed, Aristotle denies. Nor do the same brood, having forgotten where they have laid, since this animal has no memory; and so the young burst forth by themselves.

188| We have heard from many that a serpent is generated from the marrow of the human spine. For very many things arise from a hidden and blind origin, even in the quadruped class, such as salamanders, an animal in the shape of a lizard, spotted with stars, never appearing except in great rains and ceasing in fair weather. It has such coldness that it puts out fire by touch no otherwise than ice. By its slime, which it vomits from the mouth like milk, on whatever part of the human body it touches, all the hair falls off, and what has been touched changes its color into vitiligo.

189| Some things then are born from the unborn and without any like origin, as those mentioned above and whatever spring and a fixed season of the year generate. Of these some produce nothing, like salamanders, nor is there male or female in them, as neither in eels and all that generate neither an animal nor an egg from themselves. Of neither sex also is the kind of oysters and the rest that cling to the shallows or the rock.

190| But those that are generated of themselves, if they are divided into males and females, do indeed produce something by coupling, but imperfect and unlike, and from which nothing further is born, as flies produce little worms. This the nature of those called insects will make plainer, all of difficult explanation and [….] to be told in a work dedicated to them privately. Therefore the character of those mentioned and the rest of the account will be added below.

191| Of the senses, in man touch comes before the rest, then taste; in the others he is surpassed by many. Eagles see more clearly, vultures smell more keenly, moles hear more distinctly: buried in earth, so dense and soundless an element of nature, and besides with every voice tending upward, they overhear speech, and if one speaks of them, they are even said to understand and flee.

192| He to whom hearing is first denied among men, from him the use of speech is also taken away, nor are any naturally deaf who are not also mute. In sea oysters it is not likely that there is hearing, but at a sound the solenes are said to dive; therefore silence is also a custom among fishermen.

193| Fishes indeed have neither organs of hearing nor openings, yet that they hear is plain, seeing that in some preserves wild ones are seen gathering at a clap to food by habit, and in Caesar's ponds kinds of fish come to a name, and certain individuals. And so the mullet, lupus, salpa and chromis are reported to hear most clearly, and for that reason to live in shallows.

194| That they have smell is evident, since not all are caught with the same bait, and they smell before they approach. The fisherman drives out some even lurking in caves, by smearing the mouths of the rock with salt fish, they fleeing as if recognizing their own corpse, and from the deep they gather even to certain odors, as burned sepia and polypus, which therefore are thrown into the fish traps. They flee far from the smell of the bilge of ships, and most of all from the blood of fishes.

195| A polypus cannot be torn from the rocks; the same, when cunila is brought near, springs back at once from the smell. Purpurae also are caught with foul-smelling bait. For as to the remaining kind of animals, who could doubt? Serpents are put to flight by the smell of stag's horn, but most of all by that of styrax; ants are killed by that of origanum or lime or sulphur. Gnats seek sour things, and do not fly to sweet. The sense of touch belongs to all, even to those who have no other; for it belongs to oysters and to earth worms.

196| I would suppose that all have the sense of taste too. For why do different creatures seek different flavors? In which there is a chief variety and sport of nature: some prey with teeth, others with claws, others tear with the hook of the beak, others dig out with its breadth, others hollow with its point, some suck, some lick, sip, chew, devour. Nor is the variety less in the service of the feet, to seize, tear apart, hold, press, hang, and not cease to scratch the ground.

197| Roe deer and quails, as we said, grow fat on poisons, the gentlest of animals, and serpents on eggs, and the skill of dragons in this is worth watching: for they either swallow them whole, if the throat can already take them, then coil themselves up and break them inside and so cough up the shells; or, if the age is still too tender for the pups, they seize them in the ring of their coil and squeeze so gradually and powerfully that, a part being cut off as if by iron, they swallow the rest, which is held in the embrace. In a similar way, having swallowed birds whole, they bring up the feathers again with effort.

198| Scorpions live on earth. Serpents, when there is an opportunity, seek wine above all, though otherwise they need little drink; the same need very little and almost no food when they are kept shut up, as also spiders, which otherwise live by sucking. Therefore no venomous creature perishes from hunger or thirst. For they have neither heat nor blood nor sweat, which increase appetite by natural salt. In this kind all are more deadly if they eat their own kind before they do harm.

199| The kind of sphinxes and satyrs stores food in the treasuries of its jaws, then gradually brings it out from there with the hands for chewing, and what is for ants a store for a year is the custom of these for days or hours. One animal of those with digits is fed on grass, the hare; solid-hoofed animals on that and grain, and of the cloven-hoofed the swine on every food and roots. The wallowing of solid-hoofed animals is peculiar. All animals with serrated teeth are flesh-eaters; bears live also on grain, foliage, grapes, fruits and on bees, even crabs and ants; wolves, as we said, even on earth in hunger.

200| Cattle grow fat on drink, so salt is most suited to them; likewise beasts of burden, although on grain and grass too, evidently as they drink, so they eat. Besides those already mentioned, stags of the wild animals chew the cud when they are fed by us, and all do so lying down rather than standing, and in winter more than in summer, for seven months generally. The mice of Pontus also chew the cud in a similar manner.

201| In drinking, those with serrated teeth lap, and so do these common mice, though they are of another genus. Those with continuous teeth sip, as horses and oxen. Bears do neither, but also gulp water with a bite. In Africa the greater part of wild beasts do not drink in summer for lack of rain, for which reason Libyan mice that are caught die if they drink. The ever-thirsting parts of Africa produce the oryx, lacking drink by the nature of its place, and in a wonderful way a remedy for the thirsty: for the Gaetulian brigands endure by this aid, having found in their opened body bladders of a most wholesome liquid.

202| In the same Africa leopards settle in a dense tree and, hidden among the branches, leap down upon passers-by and attack from the seat of birds. And cats, in what silence, on how light a tread do they creep up on birds! How secretly do they watch, then leap upon mice! Their own droppings they dig up and cover with earth, understanding that that odor is a betrayer of themselves.

203| So it is not hard to see that there are certain senses beyond those mentioned above. For among them there are wars and friendships, whence also affections, besides those of which we have spoken in their several places. Swans and eagles are at odds; the raven and the chloreus, searching each other's eggs by night; likewise the raven and the kite, the former snatching its food from the latter; crows and the owl; eagles and the trochilus, if we believe it, since it is called king of birds; owls and the other smaller birds;

204| again, with the trochilus the weasel and the crow; the turtle dove and the pyrallis; ichneumons and wasps and phalangia spiders; the aquatic brenthos and the gull and the harpe; the harpe and the triorchis hawk; shrews and ardeolae, lying in wait for each other's young; (the aegithus, the smallest bird, with the ass: for rubbing itself against thorn bushes for scratching, the ass scatters its nests, which it so dreads that on hearing the voice of its braying it casts its eggs, and the chicks themselves fall from fear; therefore, flying to it, it hollows out its sores with its beak); foxes and kites; snakes and weasels and swine.

205| The aesalon is a little bird, a breaker of the raven's eggs, and its chicks are harassed by foxes. In turn this bird plucks the foxes' cubs and the vixen herself; when the ravens have seen this, they help it in return as against a shared enemy. The acanthis, too, lives among thorns; therefore it too hates asses, which devour the flowers of the thorn, and the aegithus so much that they believe their blood does not mix, and for that reason they slander it with many charges of poisoning.

206| Thoes and lions are at odds, and the smallest equally with the greatest. Caterpillars avoid an ant-infested tree. The spider swings itself on a thread onto the head of a serpent stretched out in the shade of its tree, and seizes the brain with its bite with such force that the serpent, hissing again and again and whirling in dizziness, cannot even break the thread from which the spider hangs, much less flee. Nor is there an end before death.

207| Again, friends are peacocks and doves, turtle doves and parrots, blackbirds and turtle doves, the crow and ardeolae against the fox kind in common enmities, the harpe and the kite against the triorchis. What, are not signs of affection found also in serpents, the least gentle class of animals? Told already are the things that Arcadia relates of a master saved by a dragon and recognized by the voice of the [dragon].

208| Let the marvel about the asp be credited to Phylarchus. He is the authority that when, in Egypt, an asp who came to the table of a certain man was constantly fed and had borne young, one of whom killed the host's son, she, returned to her habit of food, understood the guilt and put the young one to death, and afterward did not come back to the house.

209| The question of sleep calls for no difficult conjecture. Among land animals it is plain that all those which close their eyes sleep. Even those who are in doubt about the rest believe that water creatures too sleep, if only a little — not on the evidence of the eyes, since they have no eyelids, but because in their very stillness they are seen lying calm as if drugged with sleep, moving nothing but their tails, and starting in fright at any disturbance.

210| About tunnies this is asserted with more confidence, for they sleep beside banks or rocks, while the flat fishes sleep in the shallows, so that they are often lifted out by hand. Dolphins and whales are even heard snoring. That insects also sleep is evident from their silence, since they are not roused even when lights are brought close to them.

211| A human being, once born, is weighed down by sleep for some months; after that the waking time grows longer day by day. An infant dreams at once, for it both wakes in fright and imitates sucking. Some people, however, never dream, and we find instances in which a dream, coming against their habit, proved to be a sign of death for them. This is a large subject in life, and crammed with evidence pointing both ways: whether the mind at rest has some foreknowledge of things that come about by reason, or whether it is a matter of chance, like most things. If the case is argued from examples, they would surely come out even. It is almost universally agreed that dreams that follow straight after wine and food, or come when one has fallen asleep again, are empty visions. Sleep, moreover, is nothing other than the mind withdrawing into its own centre.

212| Besides man, it is evident that horses, dogs, cattle, sheep and goats dream; and for this reason it is believed to happen in all the creatures that bear live young. Of those that lay eggs it is uncertain, but that they sleep is certain. But let us pass on to the insects as well; for these remain, animals of boundless subtlety.

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