Book 9

The lion, when it is already advanced in age and has grown heavy with years, is least able to hunt, and gladly rests in cavernous or bushy haunts, and does not venture even against the weakest of beasts, mistrusting its years and mindful of its body's weakness. But those born from it, taking courage in the prime of their age and in their inborn strength, go out to the hunt, and take along the one now grown old, urging him on; then, leaving him behind at the middle of the road they must travel, they set about the hunt themselves, and when they have got as much as will suffice both for themselves and for him who begot them, with a noble and piercing roar the young call the aged one, the sons their father, as hosts call a guest to the feast. And he comes quietly and at a walk, and as it were creeping, and embracing his young, and fawning a little with his tongue, as though praising them for their good hunting, he sets to the meal, and feasts with his sons. And Solon does not command these things to the lions, but Nature teaches them, Nature that cares nothing for human laws; and she becomes an unalterable law.

The eagle, the king of birds, the other birds fear and cower before when it appears—not only while it survives and lives, but even if one should mix its feathers with those of other birds, the eagle's remain whole and untouched, while the others rot away, not enduring the company of those.

Mice are in any case a prolific creature, and bring forth many at a single birth; but if they happen to taste salt as well, then indeed they bear a great many, far more than usual. The crocodiles, when they have laid their eggs, test the genuine from the spurious in the following way. If, the moment it is hatched out, the young one seizes something, it counts thereafter as belonging to the race, and is loved by its parents, and is believed to be one of the crocodiles and is reckoned among them; but if it is sluggish and lazy and does not catch from somewhere either a fly or a gnat or an earthworm or a young lizard, the father tears it to pieces as worthless and counterfeit and in no way belonging to him. And it seems that, like these beasts, the eagles too test their genuine offspring by the ray of the sun, and love their young by judgment and not by feeling.

I hear that the teeth of the asp—which one might rightly call venom-bearing—have, as it were, very thin coverings wrapped about them, like membranes, by which they are enwrapped. So when the asp fixes its mouth upon someone, they say the little membranes part, and the venom is poured out, and again those membranes run together and unite. And the sting of the scorpion, they say, has a kind of hollow fold, not

very visible because of its extreme thinness. And they say that the poison both exists and is engendered there, and at the same moment as the blow goes forward through the sting and flows out. And the opening through which it issues you will not see either, observable as it is. But if a man spits saliva upon it, the sting is blunted and numbed and becomes powerless to strike. The bitch, even if she bears many puppies, yet the first that comes from the mother and is eldest of the litter convicts the father; for it is born most like to him in every way, while the rest are as it may chance. Nature seems to philosophize in this, preferring the sower to the receiver.

Of the shell-backed and shell-skinned creatures this too is peculiar. They are wont to become somewhat emptier and lighter as the moon wanes. And among the shell-backed, the purple-fish and whelks and sea-snails and their kindred prove what I say; among the others, the rock-crabs and crayfish and lobsters and crabs and whatever is akin to these. It is said too that the young of beasts of burden born while the moon wanes are feebler than the others and weaker; and indeed those skilled in these matters advise that what is born in this part of the month should not be reared, for it is of no worth. At the new moon, as I learn, animals either utter something with their natural voice or fall down; but the lion alone, as Aristotle says, does neither of these.

Aristotle says that the bass is keenest in hearing, and likewise the chromis and the saupe and the grey mullet. And I learn that the bass knows well that there is a little stone in its head. And in winter this becomes very cold, and pains it severely. For this reason, in that season of the year, it warms itself, and contrives this remedy against the chill from the stone, a most effective one. And the chromis does the same, I have learned, and the sea-bream and the maigre; for these too have a similar stone. There were parasites, it seems, even among the kinds of fish. The one called the "louse," at any rate, nibbles at the dolphin's catch; and the dolphin is pleased with it and willingly shares. For this reason it is very fat, as though stuffed full from a rich and abundant banquet. And Menander's Theron prides himself that he led men by the nose and made them his own manger; while Cleisophus even bound up one of his eyes with a bandage, doing a favour to Philip, whose own eye had been struck out in the siege of Methone. But there is, it seems to me, friendship and fellowship between the louse and the dolphin; for to flatter, as also other evils, a man knows, but the irrational creatures do not know it.

The elephant has this strong love too toward its offspring. The hunters of these beasts dig trenches, into which these animals fall, and some are taken and some are killed. And what the manner of such trenching is, and what its shape, and how great its depth, and what the approaches are—you will learn elsewhere; but I come to uncover and to prove their affection. A mother, seeing her own calf fallen into one of the trenches, neither hesitated nor lingered idly, but rushing with all the impulse she had, eagerly and with overwhelming feeling, she thrust herself down headlong upon her young, and both met the same end together; for the calf, crushed by the mother's weight, was shattered, while she perished darting down headlong. Ridiculous, then, are those who

are in doubt whether there is a natural affection toward offspring. The seals give birth on the land, but little by little they bring their pups to the wet, and give them a taste of the sea, then lead them back to the place of their birth, and again

lead them down to the sea, and quickly lead them out; and when they have done this many times, in the end they make them most accomplished swimmers. And easily does the pup slip into the sea-life, instruction leading it on, while Nature compels it to love its mother's ways and habits and customs. The eagle is a grasping creature, and they make their food by plunder, and eat flesh; for they snatch hares and fawns and a goose from the yard and other things. But one alone among them, the very one that is called "of Zeus," touches no flesh, but grass suffices it; and though it has heard nothing of Pythagoras of Samos, yet it abstains from living things.

If one merely touches the venomous spider, they say, it kills him without his even being severely pained. And that the bite of the asp too is most gentle Cleopatra proved, when, as Augustus drew near, she tested painless death at her banquets, and found that by the sword it was painful, the wounded confessing this, and that by drugs it was distressing—for they brought on a kind of convulsion and forced the heart to suffer—but that the death from the bite of the asp was gentle, and, to put it in Homer's words, "feeble." There are some creatures that kill merely by being touched and by their belching too, such as the centrines and the toad.

You will tell me that the fox is a cunning creature—I mean the one nourished from the land; but hear too the devices of the sea-fox, and learn what sort of things she too does. For either she does not approach the hook at all from the first, or, having swallowed it, at once turning inside out the inner part of herself, she turned it outward, unrolling her body like a tunic, and in this manner, of course, she thrust out the hook.

Men say that there are certain love-charms; and the frog gives, as a token of amorous union, a kind of cry to the female, like a lover singing some serenade, and this cry is called the ololygon, as they say. And when he has won the female, both wait through the night; for they cannot come together in the water, and by day they shrink from coupling on land. But when night falls, with much security they come out and enjoy one another. And when frogs cry more loudly and more clearly than usual, they signify a visitation of rain.

That if one touches the torpedo-fish the affliction named after it seizes his hand—this too I heard, when I was a child, my mother often saying. And from wise men I learned that even if one touches the net in which it has been caught, he is wholly numbed. And if one should put it alive into a vessel and pour in seawater, then, if it is pregnant and the time of its labour has come, it gives birth. And if one pours the water in the vessel over a man's hand or foot, the hand or the foot must be numbed.

Animals do not always have the same power in their blows or in their bites, but it is often heightened by some cause. The wasp, at any rate, when it has tasted a viper, is harsher in its sting; and the fly that has come upon some such thing is bitterer to bite and gives pain; and indeed the bite of the asp becomes wholly incurable if it has eaten a frog. And the dog, if it bites while healthy, makes a wound and kindles pain; but if it bites while rabid, it destroys. A seamstress mending a little tunic torn by a rabid dog, having somehow bitten the tunic with her mouth to stretch it, contracted the madness and died. And the bite of a fasting man is grievous and hard to cure. The Scythians are said, besides the poison with which they smear their arrows, to mix in human serum as well in their poisoning, the part that somehow floats upon the blood, which they know to be a secretion of it. Theophrastus too is sufficient to attest this.

When the snake casts off its old age—it does this at the beginning of spring—then too it cleanses the mist of its eyes and the dimness of its sight, this also being as it were an old age of the eyes; and rubbing and stroking each eye against fennel, it then becomes free of this affliction. For it grows dim-sighted through hibernating in winter in a recess and in darkness. So the fennel, gently warming the creature's sight, numbed by the cold, clears it, and makes it keener of vision.

When the halcyon perceives that she is pregnant, then she makes a nest for the reception of her chicks, neither needing mud and a roof and houses, as the swallow does, and entering uninvited as a stranger, and troubling the early morning with her chatter and cutting short the sweetest of sleep; nor again does she hold to the aforesaid task with her body alone in open places, but weaving and gathering together the spines of the needlefish, with a kind of secret bond of orderliness she encompasses her work. For some of them she binds straight, and others crosswise—you would say it was a woman skilled in weaving interlacing the woof with the warp—and she makes the work gently rounded and hollow, fashioning it like the weave of a fish-trap. And when she has woven the thing described, she carries it to the sea, where, as the wave breaks gently upon it, the lapping that comes upon it proves the halcyon's work; for the part that is not watertight she mends again against the water that falls in. But the parts that are fitted together, even if you strike them with a stone, you could not pierce. And if you should wish to cut through them with iron, they would not yield, being so well and finely woven together, no less than the linen corselet which they sing that Amasis dedicated to Athena of Lindus. And the mouth of this trap is to no other creature either passable or even very visible, but it admits her alone. Nor would even any of the sea flow in through it; so watertight is it. There, then, the halcyon rears her chicks too, borne upon the waves, as they say.

Near the Nile there grows a plant, and it is called wolf's-bane, and it is not falsely named, and reasonably so; for when a wolf treads upon it, it dies in convulsions. For this reason those Egyptians who revere this animal forbid this plant to be brought into their country.

If a domestic fowl falls into wine and is drowned, they say it does no harm either to the wine or to those within the house; but if it falls into water, it makes the water foul-smelling and works a bad odour about the air. But if a gecko slips into wine and is then drowned, it does no harm at all; whereas if it falls into oil and dies, it makes the oil foul-smelling, and whoever tastes of it breaks out swarming with lice.

That the horn of a deer, when burned as incense, drives away snakes is clear. And Aristotle says that the stone that occurs in the river Pontus—this river is in the country of the Sinti and the Maedi—when burned as incense drives away the same creatures, and indeed he describes the nature of the stone as follows. If one pours water upon it, it kindles into flame; and if you should wish to fan the burning stone with a fan to make it blaze higher, it is quenched. And burned as incense it gives off, they say, a smell heavier than bitumen. With these things Nicander too agrees.

The island of Pharos long ago—the Egyptians say what I am about to say—was filled with snakes many and various. But when Thonis, the king of the Egyptians, had received as a trust Helen, the daughter of Zeus—for Menelaus, wandering about upper Egypt and Ethiopia, had entrusted her to him—then Thonis fell in love with her, and when he was offering violence to Helen to compel her to amorous union, the daughter of Zeus, the story says, told each of these things to the wife of Thonis, who was called Polydamna; and she, fearing lest the stranger should surpass her in beauty, secretly removed Helen to Pharos, and gave her a plant hostile to the snakes there, of which the snakes, when they perceived it, sank down into the ground. And Helen planted it, and in time it grew up and gave off seed hostile to snakes; and indeed in Pharos no such creature any longer came to be. And those skilled in such matters say that the plant was called helenion.

Starfish are a sea creature, and they too are soft-shelled, and are enemies to oysters; for they dine on them. And the manner of their plot against them is this. The oysters often gape, needing coolness, and besides to be fed by anything that may fall into them; so the starfish insert one of their own limbs into the middle of the shells, each of them, and fill themselves with the flesh, the shells being kept from closing together again. Let this be told by us as peculiar also to starfish.

The Lernaean hydra, Heracles' labour, let the poets sing of, and the compilers of ancient myths, among whom is Hecataeus the chronicler; and let Homer too sing of the nature of the Chimaera with three heads, that Lycian monster of Amisodarus, king of the Lycians, a creature reared for the destruction of many, varied and unconquerable, by Zeus. And these things seem to have been set apart for the realm of myth; but the amphisbaena is a two-headed snake, both above and at the tail-end; and as it goes forward, however the need of its progress draws it to its course, it leaves the one part to be tail, and makes the other its head. And again, if it needs to go backward, it uses its heads in the opposite way to that in which it used them before.

There was, it seems, a kind of frog, and it is called the angler, and it takes its name from what it does. It has, above its eyes, baits—long, as one might say, eyelashes—and to the end of each a little ball is attached. It is aware, then, that it has been equipped by Nature, and besides whetted, with these lures against the other fish. So, hiding itself in the muddier and more silt-filled places, it lies quiet, holding out the aforesaid hairs. The smallest of the fish, then, swim toward these eyelashes, thinking the spherical orbs at the tips to be bait; and the angler, lying in wait, keeps still, and when they have come near, it draws the hairs into itself—and they are drawn in by certain hidden and unseen ways—and the little fish, having come close in their gluttony, are a meal for the frog aforesaid.

The crayfish is an enemy to the octopus. The reason is that, when the octopus throws its tentacles about it, it pays no heed to the stings that grow upon its back, but pouring itself around it, throttles it to suffocation. The crayfish knows this clearly, and flees from it. And the nature of the crayfish is this. When it is without fear, this fish goes forward, slanting its horns this way and that, so that the water, coming against its swimming, may not check its horns and hinder it from going forward; but if it flees, going backward it lets them down entirely. The reason is that, rowing as with oars and stirring like a ferryboat, it draws far away. And if there should be a battle of crayfish with one another, raising their horns and then falling upon each other like rams, they dash their foreheads together. The contest of the lamprey and the crayfish I have told above.

The dewy and moist calamint, they say, drives away snakes strongly, and so does the chaste-tree. This too the Attic women spread beneath them in their bedding at the Thesmophoria. And the chaste-tree seems both to be an enemy to venomous creatures, and is besides a check upon amorous impulse, and seems to have got its name from this. The same venomous creatures fear too the plant called rosemary.

From Theophrastus I have heard these things too. This man records a certain plant, and calls it by the name "woman-slayer," which, if one should place it upon a scorpion's back and leave it there, the scorpion is at once withered. And the same man says that the same scorpion will revive, if you should sprinkle white hellebore upon it. But I praise the woman-slayer, and the white hellebore least of all. The reason is that I hate scorpions, but love men. And Callimachus sings that in the land of Trachis there grows a tree, and it is called smilos, which the creeping things, when they come near and merely touch it, then die.

That the sow has flesh more pleasant than other flesh has long been believed. And experience teaches this too, very clearly. Whenever it eats a salamander, it itself is unharmed, but it kills those who taste of it.

The Euphrates, which flows between the Parthians and the Syrians—what else it has beyond other rivers, remarkable, I shall tell at another time; but what the Parthians and the Syrians know of it, and what is in tune with these accounts, shall be told. At the first sources of this river there are born certain snakes, and very hostile to men—but not to the natives and those reared among them, while to strangers and foreigners they are in no way hostile. And they are honoured by causing death to these.

The lion, when it walks, does not go straight forward, nor does it let the marks of its tracks be simple, but now it goes forward, now it goes back, and again it holds to its forward course, and indeed it darts in the opposite direction. Then it confounds its road, and makes it impossible for the hunters to go along its trail and easily to find the lair where it rests and dwells with its cubs. And these too are the lions' peculiar gifts of Nature.

Imagine for me a good herdsman, skilled in pasturing. Now the herdsman loves the sheep, and loves the goats too, but hates the hiccup. This is a disease that often befalls a man, and repletion brings the hiccup upon these animals too. So the herdsmen plant near the folds of the aforesaid animals a certain plant hostile to this affliction, and this plant wards off the evil from them. And those who have tried it say that this plant is good for men too against the same affliction.

Those whose business it is to gather henbane and its juice dig pits round about and loosen the roots, but they do not pull them up with their own hands, but having caught or bought some winged creature, they tie one of its two feet to the plant. And it, writhing, then pulls the plant up. And both are profitable for the uses men have of them. But if one should not pull it up in this way, he gets in another fashion what he thinks a fair and useful treasure he has taken.

As for southernwood, what good things it does, and how it gives passages to the breath, and indeed is a cleanser of the lung, this is not the time to tell; but at any rate it is an enemy to a noxious creature, and destroys the tapeworm, which, when it goes on further, becomes a beast engendered in the entrails, but reckoned among human diseases—and that among those most incurable and impossible to be brought to a cure by a mortal hand. To attest this Hippys too is sufficient. And what the writer of Rhegium says is of this kind. A woman had a tapeworm, and the most skilled of the physicians despaired of curing her. So she came to Epidaurus, and begged the god that she might be freed of the affliction that dwelt with her. The god was not present; the sacristans, however, laid the woman down where the god was wont to heal those who needed it. And the woman lay quiet, as she had been bidden, while those who served the god did what was needful for her cure, and they took her head off from her neck, and one of them put in his hand and drew out the tapeworm, a great thing of a beast. But to fit and restore the head to its former joining they were no longer able. So the god arrives, and was angry with them, that they had attempted a task too great for their own skill; but he himself, by some irresistible and divine power, restored the head to the body, and raised up the stranger. And not at all, O lord Asclepius, most humane of the gods, do I set southernwood against your skill—may I never go so mad—but it came to my mind, and I made mention of your beneficence and your astonishing cure. And that this plant too is your gift one must not even doubt.

The nautilus is itself also an octopus, and has a single shell. So it swims up, turning the shell about the lower part, that it may not draw in the brine and so push itself down again; but when it is on the waves, when there is calm and a peace of the winds, it turns the shell on its back—and it floats like a ferryboat—and putting out two tentacles on this side and that, and stirring them gently, it rows and pushes forward its connatural ship. But if there is a wind, having first stretched out the oars it makes them longer rudders, and raising up other tentacles, between which is a very thin membrane, it spreads this and makes it a sail. So it sails in this manner when it is without fear; but if it is frightened by any of the larger creatures, sinking the shell it fills it, and slips down by the weight, and having hidden itself it escapes its enemy. Then, when it is at peace, it springs up and sails again. And from these things it has its name.

To three hundred fathoms, they say, the things in the sea are visible to men, but no further. Whether fishes swim still below this, or beasts too, or whether these regions are untrodden even by them, and the sea gods and the spirits of the deep have been allotted the place, and indeed the lord of the watery element—neither do I busy myself to inquire, nor does anyone else tell.

There was, it seems, a fish accustomed to the rocks and feeding among them, of the mullet kind, and yellow to look at. A double name is current about it; for some call it adonis, and others exocoetus, the "out-sleeper." For when the wave is calmed in fair and gentle weather, then it runs itself aground, riding upon the impulse of the wave, and spreads itself out upon the rocks, and sleeps a deep and most peaceful sleep. And it knows well that from all the rest it is under truce, but it dreads those birds that are and are reckoned bred of the sea. So if one of these appears, it leaps up and springs by some natural dance and, as one might say, a most secret caper, until, leaping off the rock and then falling among the waves, it is saved. And they like to call it adonis, since it has both land and sea for friends, the first who, it seems to me, gave it the name hinting at the life of the son of Cinyras, which was divided between two divinities, the one beneath the earth and the one above the earth being in love with him.

The branch of one plant grows upon the trunk of another, often belonging to it not at all. The cause Theophrastus tells, having traced it out most naturally: that the little birds, feeding on the bloom of the trees and then perching upon the plants, void their droppings. So the seed, falling into the hollows and openings and clefts of them, and watered by the rains from heaven, then makes grow again those things from which it sprang. Thus you will observe a fig-tree growing in an olive, and in another tree another.

The "sheep" lurks in the recesses of the sea, and the so-called hepatoi, and those which the fishermen like to call the "fitting ones." And they are the greatest in nature to look at, but sluggish in swimming, and they coil about their lurking-places, whence indeed they do not leave their own retreat. And they lie in wait for those of the weaker fishes that swim past. Among these too the "ass-fish" would be reckoned; and this ass-fish fears most of fishes the rising of Sirius.

There is born in the cornfields of wheat and in the poplars and in the fig-trees besides the tribe of the cantharid-beetles, as Aristotle says; in the chickpeas the tribe of caterpillars; in the vetch certain spiders; in the leeks the so-called leek-cutter. There is born too in the cabbage a kind of grub, and its name is from the haunts in which it lives; it is called the cabbage-grub. The apple-tree too breeds something; and this often destroys the fruit of that plant, but for those still of an age to bear it might even be good for fruitfulness. And the manner another will tell.

Each of the animals knows in what part it possesses its strength, and in this it takes courage, and when plotting uses it as a weapon, and when in danger as a means of defence. The swordfish, at any rate, defends itself with its snout as with a sword, whence indeed it has its name; the stingray with its sting; the lamprey with its teeth, and very reasonably; for it has a double row of them.

The mice in the house are a timid and weak creature, and they fear a noise, and shudder at a weasel's squeak; and the field-mice too are timid. But of the domestic ones the sea-mice are bolder. Small is their body, but their daring is irresistible; and they take courage in two weapons, a tough hide and the strength of their teeth; and they fight even with the larger fishes and with the fishermen most skilled at hunting them.

Tunny perceive the change of the seasons, and know the turnings of the sun most keenly, and have no need at all of those skilled in the heavens. For wherever the beginning of winter overtakes them, there they stay quiet and remain content, and abide until the coming of the equinox. And Aristotle attests this. And that they see with one of their eyes, but no longer with the other, Aeschylus too agrees, saying, "casting his left eye aside, like a tunny." And they go into the Pontus, and take the land on their right side, the side with which they also see; and going out again they swim along the land on the opposite side, taking, most providently, the guard of their body on the side of the eye that sees.

For the rock-crabs the first shell breaks, and just as the snakes their old age, so indeed do these too cast off their shell. And when they perceive it parting from their flesh, they go everywhere maddened and seek more food, that, when bulk has been added to them, they may swell and break their shell off themselves. And when they have slipped out of it and become free, they lie relaxed upon the sand, like dead things; for they are afraid for the hide that is growing upon them, which is still wet and tender. But little by little, gathering themselves and in a way coming back to life, they first taste the sand. And to such a degree are they without daring and least courageous as long as a membrane covers them as an outer shelter; but when it begins to harden and to pass into the nature of a shell, then they cast off their cowardice, taking courage as in a weapon, in the shelter of their covering and, as one might say, in full armour.

The Troglodytes are a celebrated race of men, and they have taken their name from their way of life. The snakes fear them. The reason is that the men eat them. And the snakes, when they mate with one another, give off a most heavy smell.

When a field borders on the sea and fruitful plants stand beside it, the farmers often catch, in the summer season, octopuses and squids that have come out of the waves and crept up through the trunks and fallen upon the branches and are gathering the fruit, and they arrest them and bring a charge against the thieves. And in return for what the aforesaid creatures gathered, the masters of the plundered fruit feast on them in turn.

Rhyades is the name of a sea creature wise at discerning the passage of the seasons. At the beginning of winter, at any rate, they stay quiet, fleeing the frosts, and gladly warming themselves by remaining together in brotherly equal shares; then in spring these begin to swim and to take longer journeys, and they feed not only on what falls in their way, but also on what they seek out and trace.

If one should crush sea urchins while they are still alive and in their shells and presenting their spines, and scatter them into the sea, leaving one fragment here and another there, they come together again and unite and recognize the kindred fragment, and clinging together grow into one. And they become whole again by some wonderful and peculiar nature.

To make the increase of their animals greater for themselves, their keepers rub the parts of the females—of ewes and goats and mares—at the time of mating, filling their hands with salt and natron. From this an appetite for love arises in them more strongly. Others anoint the same parts with pepper and honey, others with natron and the seed of the nettle; and some now anoint with horse-parsley and natron. From this irritation, then, the female flocks become incontinent of themselves, and go mad after the males.

Of the greatest sea-monsters not one approaches the beaches and shores and the so-called "scaly" and shallow places, but they inhabit the open seas. And the greatest are the lion and the hammerhead and the leopard and the blowers and the saw-fish and the so-called maltha; and this last is a hard creature to contend with, and unconquerable. The ram too is a dread animal and one that brings danger, even if it appears from afar, by the disturbance of the sea and the surge that it works. And the hyena—no good sight is this for seafarers. Of the "dogs," their difference and their strength I have told above.

The castorides are a sea creature, and on the headlands and the jutting rocks they let out a certain dread wailing, and howl most heavily. Whoever, then, hears this sound, escape is impossible for him, and not long after he dies. And the whale comes forth from the sea and warms itself in the ray. But the seals come out rather at dusk; though indeed even at midday they sleep out of the sea. This too Homer knew, and in the Odyssey he made Menelaus describe to Telemachus and Pisistratus this resting-place of theirs, when Menelaus recounted to them the events at Pharos and concerning Proteus the sea divinity, and the prophecy which that Proteus I spoke of prophesied to him.

About the red mullet I have spoken above; but what I did not say, I shall now tell. At Eleusis it has honours from the initiates, and the account of this honour is twofold. Some say it is because it spawns three times in the year; others, because it eats the sea-hare, which is deadly to man. Perhaps I shall say something about the red mullet again.

They fly when they are afraid, and spring out of the sea, the squids and the sea-hawks and the flying-fish. And the squids dart up to the greatest height with their fins, and lighten themselves aloft, and are borne along in shoals, in common, like birds; the flying-fish make their flight lower; while the hawks are borne a little above the brine, so that one can scarcely judge that they are not swimming but flying.

Fishes wander and roam, some in masses, like herds of cattle or ranks of soldiers going in squadrons and battalions, and some go in order in a column, and others—you would say they are companies. Others are numbered into tens and swim together in this way; and some swim by pairs. Others keep house in their lurking-places and live out their lives there.

I learn that those skilled in herding, when they wish their animals to put on fat, take away their horns. And when they wish to make the he-goats more eager for mating, they anoint their nostrils with perfume, and their beards too they anoint with the same. And again they check excessive appetite, if one ties up the middle of their tails with a thread. Aristotle says that mares cast their foals if they smell overmuch the wick of a lamp that has been put out. And I hear that against the house-dogs, that they may not run away, this device has been contrived. Having measured their tail with a reed, they anoint the reed with butter, and then give it to them to lick all round. And they remain, they say, as though bound.

These too are peculiar to the dog. They do not bark if anyone approaches carrying with him the tail of a weasel—a weasel which he has hunted, and having cut off the aforesaid tail then let it go alive. And an ass will not bray, if you hang a stone from its tail, as they say.

In the summer season, when the sun is very strongly at its height, the elephants anoint one another with thick mud, and this affords them coolness, and is more pleasant to these animals than any cavernous house or any tree overshadowing them with branches. These follow the scent strongly, and have a most keen perception. They go forward, making a way for one another, and the first—for they go in a column—perceiving the grass underfoot, and understanding from his touch of it that men have passed through, pulls up the grass and gives it to the one behind to smell, and that one to the one after him; and this passing-on, as one might say, goes through them all. And indeed, when it reaches the one bringing up the rear, he sounds out loudly, and they, as though soldiers receiving a watchword, then turn aside into the glens and thickets of the mountains, or the more hollow parts of the marshes, and indeed those of the plains that are thick with bushes. In any case, whatever men tread, this they flee; for they regard this animal as their bitterest enemy. And when their pastures fail them, some dig up the roots and feed on these too, while others go off seeking fodder. And the first of them who happens upon the prize turns back and calls his fellows and leads them to the find.

In the most violent winter, when the sea is in tumult, and the winds blow down harsh and violent, the fishes shudder at the sea that is at once their nurse and their friend. And some of them heap up the sand with their fins, and overshadowing themselves they keep warm beneath it, while others slip under some rock, and in shelter from the cold rest very gladly; and others, running down into the recesses of the deep, then turn aside the upper turmoil, going below and into the depth; for it is not, they say, so much above that the wave swells and beats in its rage. But at the beginning of spring, when the air has become bright, and the plants begin to flourish, and the meadows are thick with their native growth, the fishes, perceiving that the things of the deep are calm and fair, run up and leap, and swim near the land, as though come home from abroad.

These three become the greatest of animals from the smallest: of the water creatures the crocodile, of the winged the great ostrich, and of the four-footed the elephant. Juba says that his father had a Libyan elephant many years old, descended from the higher members of its race; and that Ptolemy Philadelphus had an Ethiopian one, and that it too, having lived from far back, became most gentle and most tame, partly from its fellowship with men, partly from being broken in; and he sings that Seleucus Nicator possessed an Indian elephant, and indeed says that this one lived on to the reign of the Antiochi.

Those fishes which have a river neighbouring on their native sea, or some lake, when they are about to spawn, swim out of the brine, choosing the water that is unbroken by the waves and least troubled and beaten by the winds. For the peace of the waters is good for them to receive their offspring and to keep their young unharmed and unplotted-against, both in other ways and indeed through the absence and scarcity of beasts; and lakes and rivers somehow tend to have this freedom. For this reason the Euxine Sea too abounds in many fishes; for it has not learned to nourish monsters. And if anywhere it nourishes a seal and very small dolphins, yet from all the others the fishes there are in shelter.

The sea-needles, being thin, and not having a womb capacious of embryos, do not endure the growth of the young within, but burst, and in this way they do not bear but cast forth their offspring.

It is said that the traces and tokens of the asp's bites are not very clear or easy to discern. And I learn the cause is this. The poison from it is most sharp and swiftest to run through. So the asp fastens on, but the venom does not stay on the surface, but slips down into the inner passages, and vanishes from the surface and the skin beneath the eye, and is thrust within. For this reason too the death of Cleopatra was not very easily recognized by those about Augustus, but late, when two punctures, hard to see and hard to detect, were observed, by which the riddle of the death was discovered. And besides, the traces of the asp's trail appeared, evident to those who have the knowledge of the movement of these animals.

When Pompeius Rufus was aedile of the Romans, at the Panathenaea a man who was a drug-pounder and one of those who rear snakes for shows, with many others of the same craft standing by, put an asp to his arm as a proof of his skill, and was bitten. Then with his mouth he sucked out the venom. But not having water to gulp down after—for there was none at hand, although it had been prepared for him, the vessel having been overturned by a plot—since he neither washed out the poison nor rinsed it away, he ended his life, after the second day, I believe, in no pain at all, the venom having quietly rotted away his gums and his mouth.

When spring is at its height and the earth is flowering, the animals are filled with amorous frenzy and call to mind their matings, and are eager to couple with one another, both the mountain creatures and those that dwell in the sea and those that travel aloft. And of the fishes some rub off their eggs upon the sands, eggs that are dense and clinging to one another, while others, as they swim, then cast forth a very great quantity of eggs, and those swimming behind swallow most of them. And indeed the males go before and shed their milt, and the females following, gaping very greedily, fill themselves; and this is their mating. And that certain fishes even dwell together with their females as wives, and guard them, and that a kind of jealousy is kindled even in the kinds of fishes, I have told above.

Aristotle says, and Democritus before him, and Theophrastus too in the third place says it, that fishes are not nourished by the salt water, but by the fresh water mingled with the sea. And since this seems somehow incredible, the son of Nicomachus, wishing to confirm what was said by the very facts, says that there is a drinkable water in every sea, and that it is proved thus. If one should make a vessel of wax, hollow and thin, and let it down empty into the sea, fastening it somewhere so as to be able to draw it up, when a night and a day have passed he draws it up filled with sweet and drinkable water. And Empedocles of Acragas too says that there is a sweet water in the sea, not visible to all, but nourishing to the fishes. And he gives a natural cause of this sweetening of the water in the brine, which you will learn from his work.

Those initiated to the Two Goddesses would not, they say, eat the dogfish; for it is not a pure dish, since it gives birth through its mouth. But some say that it does not give birth this way, but that, fearing some of those that plot against its young, it swallows them down and hides them, and then, when the one that frightened it has passed by, disgorges them again alive. And the red mullet the same initiates would not taste, nor would the priestess of Hera at Argos; and the reasons I know I have told somewhere above.

The matings of the viper and the lamprey, and how they consort with one another—she coming forth from the sea, and he creeping out of his hole—I have not forgotten that I told in what went before. But what I did not say I would now say. When the viper is about to consort with her, that he may seem gentle, as befits a bridegroom, he vomits up and casts out his venom, and so, hissing softly, he calls his bride, as though striking up a kind of pre-nuptial wedding song. And when they have accomplished together the rites of their amorous eagerness, she rushes off to the waves and the sea, while he, sucking up his venom again, returns once more to his own haunts.