Book 16

When a purple-fisher has caught the murex — not for men's food, but for the dyeing of wool — then, if the colour drawn from the creature is to remain fast and hard to wash out and able to produce a genuine, undeceiving dye, he destroys the murex, shell and all, with a single blow of a stone. But if the blow falls too lightly and the creature is left still breathing, the murex, when it is struck a second time with the stone, is useless for the dye; for in its pain it has used up the colour, which has either been absorbed into the mass of its flesh or has otherwise flowed away. This, they say, Homer too knew, when he says that those who die suddenly are overtaken by the death of the purple, chanting in his own verses the well-known line: "Then purple death seized him, and mighty fate."

In India, I learn, there are birds called parrots, of which I have already made mention above; but what I did not say of them before, this it now seems most fitting to say. There are three kinds of them, I am told; and all of them, having learned as children do, themselves become talkative and utter human speech. In the forests they give out a bird's cry, but no clear and articulate voice do they produce; they are untaught and not yet talkative. There are also peacocks in India, the largest anywhere, and green-plumaged pigeons; a man seeing one for the first time, and without skill in judging birds, would say it was a parrot and not a pigeon. They have lips and legs resembling in colour those of the partridges in Greece. Cocks too grow there of the greatest size, and they have a crest not red, as ours have, but variegated like garlands of flowers. The feathers of their tails are not curved nor bent into a spiral, but flat, and they trail them, as peacocks do, when they do not raise and erect them. The feathers of the Indian cocks have a colour golden and dark-gleaming, like the emerald stone.

There is also another bird in India, the size of a starling; it is variegated, and when trained it can imitate a man's voice, and it is more talkative and quicker-witted than the parrots. It does not, however, gladly endure to be fed by men, but out of longing for freedom and desire for the open speech that goes with living among its own kind, it embraces hunger rather than slavery with luxury. The Macedonians who settled among the Indians, in the city of Bucephala and the country about it, and in the city called Cyropolis, and in the others which Alexander son of Philip founded, call it the kerkion; and it got this name in the following way, since it too shakes its rump, as wagtails do.

I hear too that there grows in India a bird called the kela; it is three times the size of the bustard, and has a mouth fearfully strong and long legs; it bears also a crop, and that a very large one, like a leather bag, and it has a voice exceedingly harsh. In the rest of its plumage it is ash-grey, but at the tips of its wings it is pale yellow.

I hear also that there is an Indian hoopoe twice the size of ours and fairer to look upon. And Homer says that a horse's bridle and trapping lie stored up as a treasure for a Greek king, but this hoopoe is a plaything for the king of the Indians, who carries it about in his hands and delights in it, and continually gazes at it, marvelling at the bird's splendour and its natural beauty. The Brahmans tell a tale also of this bird, and the tale that is told is this. A son was born to a king of the Indians, and he had brothers, who, when they came to manhood, became most lawless and most wicked. They despised this one as the youngest, and they mocked their father and mother, scorning their old age. So the parents shrank from living with these sons, and fled away, the boy and the old people together. But when a hard journey overtook them, the old people gave out and died; yet the boy did not neglect them, but buried them within himself, cutting open his head with a sword. And the all-seeing Sun, the same people say, marvelling at the excess of his piety, made him a bird, fairest to look upon and long-lived in his span; and a crest has risen up from the top of his head, as a memorial, as it were, of what he did when he was fleeing. Some such tale the Athenians too told in their marvelling about the crested lark, attending to a certain myth, which Aristophanes the comic poet seems to me to have followed when he says in the Birds: "For you were born ignorant and no busybody, nor have you pored over Aesop, who used to say in his tale that the lark was the first of all birds to be born, before the earth, and then her father died of sickness; and there was no earth, and he lay unburied on the fifth day. She, at a loss in her helplessness, buried her father in her own head." It seems, then, that the tale, told among the Indians of one bird, flowed over to the Greeks also of another. For the Brahmans say that it was an immeasurable length of time ago that these things were done by the Indian hoopoe, while he was still a man and a boy in age, to his parents.

In India there is born a creature like a land-crocodile to look at; in size it would be like a Maltese lapdog. It is covered with scales so rough and so close-set that, when it is flayed, men use the skins for files. It cuts through bronze and gnaws away iron. They call it the phattages.

The Syrian partridge is found about Antiochia in Pisidia, and it eats even stones; it is smaller than the partridge and black in colour, but tawny in the beak. It is not tamed like the other, nor does it become domesticated, but remains wild forever. It is not large, pleasanter to eat than the other, and its flesh seems somehow firmer.

The Indian sea breeds sea-snakes broad in the tail; and the lakes too breed water-snakes of the greatest size. The sea-serpents seem to have a bite that is jagged rather than venomous.

In India of wild horses and of asses of this kind

there are herds. So when the asses mount the mares, the mares, they say, submit and take pleasure in the union, and bear mules tawny in colour and very swift, though otherwise hard to bridle and ticklish. Men catch these with foot-traps and then bring them up, they say, to the king of the Prasii; and those caught when two years old do not refuse breaking-in, but the older ones differ not at all from jagged-toothed and flesh-eating beasts. Among the Indian Prasii, they say, there is a kind of ape that thinks like a man; in size they are like Hyrcanian hounds, and a forelock is seen growing naturally on them; one who did not know the truth would say they were ascetics. A satyr-like beard grows beneath their chins, and the tail is like a lion's brush. The whole of the rest of their body is white, but the head and the tip of the tail are tawny. They are temperate and tame by nature; they live in the woods, and feed on the wild produce of the season. They come in throngs to the outskirts of Latage (Latage is an Indian city), and eat the boiled rice set out for them by the king; and every day this feast is set ready before them. When they have eaten their fill, they go back again to their woodland haunts, they say, in good order, and harm nothing in their path.

There is a grass-eating creature in India, and it is twice the size of a horse. It has a very bushy tail of an absolutely black colour, and these hairs would be finer than human hairs, and the women of India set great store by having them; for they plait them in and adorn themselves very becomingly, fastening them on beneath their own natural tresses. The length of each hair reaches even to two cubits, and from a single root some thirty grow out together like a tassel. Of all creatures this is the most cowardly; for if it is seen by anyone and perceives that it is being watched, it flees with all the speed of its feet, and relies on its eagerness rather than on the swiftness of its legs. It is pursued by horsemen and by hounds good at running; but if it sees that it is going to be caught, it hides its tail in some thicket and stands facing about, watching the hunters, and takes a little courage, thinking it will no longer be an object of desire when its tail is not seen; for it knows that the tail is its beauty. But it holds an empty notion about this; for someone shoots it with a poisoned arrow, and having killed it cuts off the tail, the prize of the hunt. And having flayed the whole body — for the hide too is good — he leaves the carcass; for the Indians have no use at all for its flesh.

There were, it seems, monsters in the Indian sea five times the size of the largest elephant. At any rate a single rib of one of these whales extends as much as twenty cubits, it has a lip fifteen cubits long, and the fin of each gill is seven cubits broad. There are conchs and purple-shells big enough to hold an heap of earth most easily; and even the shells of the sea-urchins there could contain as much. The sizes of the fishes are beyond reckoning, especially of the basses, and there are bonitos and gilt-heads. I hear that in the season, when the rivers come down in flood, rushing violently and pouring out over the land, these fishes too overflow upon the fields and are carried about and wander in the shallow water. And when the rains that overfill the rivers cease and the streams go back again and return to their natural courses, in the low-lying and marshy and level places — where indeed the so-called fallows are wont to have certain hollows — fish even eight cubits long are left behind. And the farmers catch them while they swim feebly, since they are carried not in the deep but on the surface, and barely and with difficulty keep themselves alive in the little water.

The following too are peculiar to the fishes of India. There are rays among them, each no smaller than an Argolic shield, and the shrimps of India are larger than crayfish. Those that run up out of the sea through the river Ganges have very large claws, rough to the touch; but those that fall from the Red Sea into the Indus have smooth spines, as I have learned, though the coiled appendages that hang from them are rather long and curling. These have no claws.

The river-tortoise in India has a shell no smaller than a full-sized boat. At any rate each one holds ten medimni of pulse. There are also land-tortoises, and they would be the size of the largest clods which rise up in deep tillage, when the soil is yielding and the plough goes down deep and cuts the furrow most easily and lifts the clods on high. These, they say, even shed their shells. So the ploughmen and all who labour about the fields drag them up with mattocks, and pull them out as one pulls maggots out of worm-eaten plants. They are sweet of flesh and fat, not bitter like the sea-tortoises.

There are quick-witted creatures among us too, not indeed as many as in India, but a few. There the elephant is of this kind, and the parrot, and the sphinges, and the so-called satyrs; and wise too, it seems, was the Indian ant. Now our own ants dig their burrows and runs under the earth, and make certain hidden lairs by burrowing, and wear themselves out in mining-work, so to speak, secret and unseen; but the Indian ants build for themselves heaped-up dwellings, and these not in flat and smooth and easily flooded places, but in lofty and high ones. In these they bore certain passages and, so to speak, Egyptian conduits or Cretan labyrinths, with a secret skill, and so make habitations for themselves, not straight and easy to pass through, but slanting with windings and borings; and they leave on the surface a single opening, through which they themselves go in and out and bring in whatever seeds they gather, and then carry them into their storehouses. They contrive their lofty dwellings in order to escape the overflowings and floodings from the rivers. And by this skill it comes about that they live as it were on look-out points or islands, when the ground all round those little hillocks is flooded. Yet those mounds, heaped up though they are, are so far from being dissolved and broken up by the flooding all about that they are even made firm by it: first by the morning dew, for from this they are clothed, so to speak, with a thin but strong coat of frost; and then they are bound together below by a mossy crust of the river-mud. About the Indian ants Juba wrote of old; let what I have said suffice for now.

Among the Indian Arianians there is a chasm of Pluto, and below it certain secret conduits and hidden ways and runs, unseen by men but deep and reaching to a vast length; how they came to be, and in what manner they were dug, neither do the Indians say, nor do I busy myself to learn. Now the Indians drive thither more than thirty thousand beasts — sheep and goats and oxen and horses; and each of those who suspect a dream, or some omen, or a rumour, or an ill-boding bird, casts in, in place of his own life, according to the means he has at home, ransoming himself and giving the life of the beast in exchange for his own soul. And the beasts are led, neither dragged by bonds nor otherwise driven, but of their own will they accomplish this journey, drawn by some secret attraction and spell. Then, standing at the mouth, they leap in of their own accord, and to human sight they are no longer to be seen, once they have fallen into the secret and yawning chasm of the earth; but from above are heard the lowings of oxen and the bleating of sheep, the neighing of horses and the bleating of goats. And if anyone walks along the surface and goes forward, putting his ear to the ground, he will hear the sounds I have mentioned for a very long way. Nor does the mingled noise ever fail, since they send down the beasts in their stead every day. Whether only the recent ones are heard, or some of the first as well, I do not know; but heard they are. And let this too be reckoned among the things peculiar to the creatures there.

In what is called the Great Sea they tell also of a very large island, and its name, I hear, is Taprobane; I learn that the island is very long and high, that it has a length of seven thousand stades and a breadth of five thousand, and that it has no cities, but seven hundred and fifty villages; and the dwellings in which the natives lodge are made of wood, and indeed of reeds. There are bred in this sea tortoises of the greatest size, whose shells become roofs; for a single shell is even fifteen cubits, so that not a few may dwell beneath it; and it keeps off the most burning suns, and gives welcome shade, and against the downpours of rain it is a defence, stronger than any tile, and shakes off the onsets of the showers; and those dwelling beneath hear it drummed upon, as when waters fall on a roof. Yet they have no need to replace it as they would a cracked tile; for the shell is hard, and is like a rock hollowed out, with a cave and a self-made roof.

The island in the Great Sea, then, which they call Taprobane, has palm-groves wonderfully planted in rows, just as in luxurious parks their keepers plant the shade-bearing trees; and it has also pastures of many elephants of the greatest size. And the island elephants are mightier in strength than the mainland ones and larger to look upon, and would in every way be judged quicker-witted. So men build great ships and carry them across to the mainland opposite — for the island has forests too — and on crossing over sell them to the king in the country of the Calingae. And because of the size of the island, those who dwell in its midst do not even know the sea, but pass a mainlander's life, though they learn by report that a sea goes round and encircles them. Those who live by the sea know nothing of the hunting of elephants, but know it by hearsay only; about the catching of fish and of sea-monsters, however, they busy themselves. For they say that the sea which goes round the circle of the island nourishes an irresistible multitude of fish and sea-monsters, and that these have heads of lions and leopards and wolves and rams too; and, what is a still greater wonder, some of the monsters carry about the shapes of satyrs and the look of women, to whom, in place of tresses, spines are attached. They tell too of other monstrous shapes which the monsters have, the forms of which not even men skilled at painting and at compounding bodies into monstrous spectacles could ever exactly represent and set forth by skill of drawing; they have long, coiling tails, and for feet either claws or fins. I learn too that they are amphibious, and by night graze on the fields; for they eat grass like cattle and seed-gathering birds, and delight also in the ripe palm-dates, shaking the trees by throwing about them their coils, which are moist and able to twine. So this palm, falling down from the violent shaking, they feed upon. But night wanes, and there is not yet clear day, when those creatures vanish, plunging into the deep, just as the dawn is about to shine forth. There are also, they say, many whales, but these do not come on to the land, lying in wait for the tunnies. And of dolphins, they say, there are two kinds: one wild and jagged-toothed and most ruthless toward fishermen and utterly merciless; the other gentle and tame by nature. It leaps and swims about, and is like a fawning lapdog, and you may stroke it, and it will submit; and if you throw it food, it will gladly take it.

The sea-hare (of the Great Sea, that is; for I have spoken of the other one, of the other sea) — this one resembles the land-hare in every way except its hairs. For the down of the land creature seems soft and not resistant to the touch; but this one has prickly, upright hairs, and if anyone touches it, he is scratched. They say that it swims on the very surface-ripple of the sea and does not sink into the deep, and that it is swiftest in swimming. Alive, it would not easily be caught. The reason is that it never falls into a net, nor

does it approach the rod with hook and bait. But when this hare falls sick, and being then least able to swim is cast ashore, anyone who touches it with his hand perishes, abandoned. Indeed, if one touches this hare even with a staff, he suffers the same thing through the staff itself, just as those do who touch the basilisk. There is a root, they say, that grows in the island in the Great Sea, well known to all, which is a remedy against faintness. Brought to the nose of one who is fainting, it brings the man back to life. But if it is neglected, the suffering goes on even to death for the man; so great is the strength this hare has for harm. In the regions of India — I mean the innermost — there are mountains, they say, hard to climb and full of game, and they have all the creatures that our own land nourishes, but wild; for they say that even the sheep there are wild beasts, and the dogs and goats and oxen wander free and unowned, released from any herdsman's rule. The numbers of them are beyond counting, say the learned men of the Indians; and among these the Brahmans too deserve to be counted, for they agree to the same about these things. There is said to be a single-horned creature among them, called by them the cartazon. In size it is like a full-grown horse, and it has a mane, and tawny down, and is excellently endowed in the feet. Its feet are unjointed and like an elephant's, and it has a boar's tail; in the middle of its brows it has a horn growing, not smooth but with certain spirals and quite natural, and black in colour; and that horn is said to be exceedingly sharp. I hear that this beast has a voice harsher and louder than that of any other. When other animals approach it, it is forbearing and gentle; but toward its own kind it is somewhat quarrelsome. They say that not only do the males have a natural impulse to butt and fight one another, but that they feel the same passion toward the females, and pressing the rivalry even to death of the loser, they fight it out. The whole of its body is sturdy, but the strength of its horn is irresistible. It loves deserted pastures and wanders alone; but at its season of mating, having paired with the female, it grows gentle, and indeed the two graze together. Then, when that time has passed and the female is pregnant, it grows savage again, and this Indian cartazon becomes a solitary. The young, while very tender, are brought, they say, to the king of the Prasii, and show their strength against one another at the festal spectacles. But no one remembers a full-grown one ever being caught.

To one who has crossed the mountains bordering the Indians on their innermost side there appear, they say, very thickly wooded glens, and the place is called by the Indians Colounda. In these glens, they say, there wander creatures resembling satyrs in shape, shaggy over their whole body, and they have a horse's tail along the loins. By themselves, when undisturbed, they spend their time in the thickets feeding on wood; but when they perceive the noise of hunters and hear the barking of hounds, they run up to the very peaks with unmatched speed; for they are practised in mountain-climbing. And they fight off their pursuers by rolling certain rocks down upon them, and many of those who overtake them are destroyed. By this means they are hard to catch, and only with difficulty and after long time, they say, are a few of them brought to the Prasii. And of these the sick ones were brought, or some pregnant females; and it came about that the former were caught through their sluggishness, the latter through the burden of the belly.

There is also a people beyond the Indians called the Sciratae, and they are flat-nosed, whether because they have remained so from soft infancy through the crushing of the nose, or because they are even born in this manner. There are bred among them snakes of the greatest size, of which some seize the flocks and devour them, while others suck out their blood, just as among the Greeks do the goat-suckers, of which I know I have made very timely mention above.

The teachableness of the horse too, it seems, was one of its peculiar traits, and of this the following is a proof. The Sybarites in Italy, I hear, took an excess of thought for luxury, and were ignorant of all other works and pursuits, and passed their whole life in idleness and extravagance, taking their ease. To describe each of the things at Sybaris would now be a long task; but the following at least admits an irresistible luxury. Their horses had been trained to dance to the pipe at the time of their banqueting. The Crotoniates, then, knowing this — for they were at war with them — silenced the trumpet and its strenuous note that summons to arms, and taking pipes and pipers, when they were near and an arrow now reached its mark, struck up the dancing-tune; and the horses of the Sybarites, hearing it, as though they were in the midst of their banquets, shook off their riders and leaped and danced. And so they threw the line into confusion and danced the war away.

About the horses called wolf-torn I have spoken above; and now too shall be told what peculiar things I have further heard. They have a face compact and

short, and besides flat-nosed. They are said to be lovers of the Greeks too, and to have a certain secret understanding of this race, and to keep a connatural friendship toward them; and when men approach and touch them and clap them gently with the hollow of the hand, they are not vexed nor do they leap away, but spend the day with them as though bound, and when the men sleep, they sleep beside them. But if a barbarian approaches, then — just as the scent-tracking hounds know the wild beasts from their tracks — so those mares too recognize the race, and neigh and flee, as though in dread of a wild beast. To the men they are used to, who throw them fodder and bestow the rest of their care upon them, they are very much attached, and they wish to appear beautiful, and still more to their own charioteers. And the proof is that, when they swim, they go further into the lake or the sea or the spring, wishing to brighten their faces, lest anything ugly or unsightly that has fallen on them from the manger or from the road should then sully their beauty. To a wolf-torn mare fragrant ointments are dear, as to a bride, and the scent of perfumes. And Homer too admits that all horses by nature delight in unguents, when he says: "For they have lost the good strength of their gentle charioteer, who full often poured liquid oil over their manes, when he had washed them in clear water." And Simonides, when he says that women were begotten and moulded from all manner of beasts, says that in some of them, those made from horses, the love of adornment and of perfumes was also born by nature. And what he says is this: "Another a horse, dainty and long-maned, bore — she who turns aside servile tasks and toil; she would not touch the mill, nor lift the sieve, nor cast the dung out of the house, nor sit by the oven, shunning the soot. She makes a man her friend by force. Every day she washes off the dirt twice, sometimes thrice, and anoints herself with perfumes. Always she wears her hair combed out, deep, shaded with flowers. A fair sight, indeed, is such a woman to others, but to him who has her she becomes an evil — unless he be some tyrant or sceptred king, who glories his heart in such things." The following too, I suppose, are peculiar to horses. The Persians, so that their horses may not be easily startled, accustom them to noises and to clashings of bronze, and ring bells at them, so that they may never in war be afraid of the clatter of full armour and the din of swords upon shields. And images of corpses stuffed with chaff they lay beneath them, that they may grow used to treading on corpses in war, and may not, dreading something terrifying, then be useless in the works of arms. Nor did this escape Homer, as he himself shows. For that the Thracian Rhesus was slain, and his companions with him, we hear in the Iliad from boyhood; and what we hear is this. The son of Tydeus slaughters the Thracians, and the son of Laertes drags away the slain by the feet, so that the Thracian horses, being newcomers, might not be startled at becoming entangled with the corpses, and, treading on them unfamiliarly as though on terrors, leap away. But once they have learned, no forgetting of the lesson would seize them; so good are horses at learning whatever is useful. As for how they are capable of loving, and to what degree, I have spoken in earlier books.

In frosty places, when the snow lies thick and the cold is at its height, the sheep are free of gall (being shut in, and not partaking of fresh fodder, they are then found to be such); but at the beginning of spring, when they go out to pasture, they fill up with gall. This, they say, is still more wont to attend the Scythian sheep.

Agatharchides says that there is a race of certain men in Libya, and that they are called Psylli. In all the rest of their manner of life they differ in nothing from other men, but they have a body strange and marvellous when compared with that of other peoples; for the biting and stinging creatures, many as they are, do no harm to them alone. They feel nothing when a snake bites, nor when a venomous spider stings to death the rest of mankind, nor when a scorpion drives in its sting. But when any of these comes near and brushes against the body and at the same time draws in the scent of these men, then, as though it had tasted a drug producing a drowsiness that draws toward insensibility, it grows weak and slack, until the man has passed by. And how they test their own infants, whether they are true-born or bastards, proving them among the reptiles as craftsmen prove gold in the fire, I have told above.

Callias, in the tenth of his books about Agathocles of Syracuse, says that the horned snakes are terrible in their bite; for they kill both irrational beasts and men, unless a Libyan man be present, of the Psyllian race. This man, then, whether he comes when summoned or chances to be present, if he sees the victim still gently suffering, by merely spitting on the wound soothes the pain and charms away the danger with his saliva. But if he finds the man distressed and bearing it ill, he draws a great draught of water within his teeth, uses it as a rinse for his mouth, and then, pouring it into a cup, gives it to the wounded man to drink. And if the evil prevails even beyond this remedy, he lies down naked beside the sick man, naked himself, and rubbing against him the connatural strength of his own skin, makes the man free of the harm. A sufficient witness to this might be Nicander of Colophon, when he says: "I have heard how the race of the Libyan Psylli neither themselves suffer at all from beasts with their festering wounds — they whom the dune-nursing Syrtis feeds — and how they have well warded off from other men too the wounds that grieved them, not by watering roots, but from their own bodies," and what follows.

Empedocles the natural philosopher says — speaking also, no doubt, about the peculiarities of animals — that there come into being certain creatures grown together and mixed, differing in form but woven together in unity of body. And what he says is this: "Many things were born with double faces and double breasts, ox-natured with the prow of a man; and on the other hand there sprang up man-natured things with ox-heads, mingled, here from men, there with the nature of women, fitted out with shadowy limbs."

In Lycia, Callisthenes of Olynthus says, the goats too are sheared, just as everywhere the sheep are; for they grow exceedingly shaggy and thick-haired, so that, one might say, curls or coils of hair hang from them, and indeed the craftsmen who build ships use them, plaiting them into ropes.

Ctesias says, in his Indian accounts, that the people called the Cynamolgi keep many dogs the size of Hyrcanian hounds, and that they are mighty keepers of dogs. And the Cnidian gives these reasons. From the summer solstice to mid-winter there come upon them herds of oxen, like a swarm of bees or a stirred-up wasps' nest, the oxen too many to count; and they are wild and insolent, and rage terribly with their horns. So, having no other way to drive them off, the people loose upon them their bred dogs, reared for this very purpose, which overcome and destroy the oxen with ease. Then of the flesh they take out what seems to them fit for eating, and the rest they set apart for the dogs, very gladly sharing with them, as though making first-offerings to benefactors. And in the season when the oxen no longer come, they keep the dogs as fellow-hunters against the other creatures. And of the females they milk the milk, and from this they get their name; for they drink it, just as we drink that of sheep and goats.

Aeschylides, in his work on farming, says that in the land of the Ceans few sheep are bred by each of the farmers. The reason is that Ceos is exceedingly thin-soiled and has no pastures; so they give them tree-medick and fig-leaves, and the fallen leaves of the olive, and indeed the chaff of various pulses, and they sow thistles besides, and these things are a good meal for them. From these is got milk, and this, when worked, makes most excellent cheese; it is called Cythnian, says the same writer, and indeed a talent of it sells for ninety drachmas. There are bred also lambs splendid in their season, and they sell not like the others, but at a haughtier price.

Phoenician accounts say that the native cattle there are so great in size that the milkers, even the very tallest, stand, or need a stool, that climbing up they may reach the udders. Among the Libyans bordering on the Indians, I hear, there are certain herds of backward-grazing oxen. The reason is that Nature, having at first erred or been careless, set the horns before their eyes, and does not let them see what is before their feet; and she turns their walk toward the rear, and so, stooping down, they crop the grass. Aristotle, however, says that in the cattle of the Neuri the horns and the ears grow from the same outgrowth, and are woven together. The same writer says that in a certain region of the Libyans the goats have their teats hanging from the breast. The following too might be the son of Nicomachus's: among the Budini who dwell about Cariscus, he says, no white sheep is born, but all are black.

Nymphodorus says that Sardinia is a good mother of flocks. And it is worth marvelling at the creature this land breeds — the goats. For the natives wear the skins, and these are a covering; in winter they keep warm, and in summer they cool, by some secret nature; and the hair, a cubit long, grows fast to the skins. This garment, it seems, must in the cold have the hairs turned toward the skin, and in the summer outward, if the wearer is to be warmed in the cold and not stifled in the summer.

What then? Shall we leave Orthagoras without mention? He says, in his Indian accounts, that there is a village called Coytha, taking its name in this way, and that to the native goats, within their pens, the herdsmen throw dried fish for fodder.

That the elephant fears the pig I have said above; but I wish to tell what happened at Megara when the Megarians were besieged by Antipater, and what is to be told is this. When the Macedonians were pressing hard, the Megarians smeared pigs with liquid pitch and set them on fire and let them loose against the enemy. And the pigs, falling among the squadrons of elephants, frenzied and squealing as they burned, drove the beasts mad and threw them into dreadful confusion. So the elephants neither kept their ranks nor were any longer tame, although they had been broken in from infancy — whether because elephants by some peculiar nature hate and loathe pigs, or because they shudder at the shrill and harsh sound of their cries. The keepers of the elephants, perceiving this, rear pigs alongside them, they say, so that from familiarity they may dread them less.

Among the Indians called Psylli (for there are also Libyan Psylli, different from these) the horses grow no bigger than rams, and the sheep are seen to be small, like lambs, and the asses too are of this size, and the mules and the oxen and every other beast whatever. They say that no pig is bred in India, neither tame nor wild; and the Indians loathe even to eat this creature, and would never taste swine's flesh, just as the same people would not taste human flesh.

At Metropolis in the Ephesian land, I hear, there is a lake, and near it a cave; and the cavern has an unmatched multitude of snakes, and these are said to be of the greatest size and terrible in the bite. They come forth from the cavern, the story goes, far enough to crawl out into the neighbouring lake and swim; but trying to advance further than the water, they cannot, for as they are about to set foot on land, great crabs lie in wait, which, raising their claws, seize them in a stranglehold and kill them. So the snakes, in dread of their enemies, keep quiet, and the land is impassable to them; for they shudder at the guard and the punishment from the crabs. And surely all those about the place would have perished long ago, had not the said crabs, by some secret nature, encompassed the edges of the lake and, keeping the snakes out, made everything in that place peaceful.

Onesicritus of Astypalaea says that in India, in the time of the expedition of Alexander son of Philip, there were two serpents, which Abisares the Indian kept, of which the one was a hundred and forty cubits long, the other eighty; and he says that Alexander earnestly desired to see them. Egyptian accounts say too that in the time of Philadelphus two living serpents were brought from Ethiopia to the city of Alexander, and that one of them was fourteen cubits, the other thirteen; and that in the time of Euergetes three were brought, and one was nine cubits, the other seven, and the third fell short by one; and the Egyptians say that they were reared in the temple of Asclepius with much care. And the same people say that asps four cubits long are often produced. I have made mention of these things, since, in going through the peculiar nature of the creatures, I wished also to show to what length they naturally grow. So those too who have written the histories about Chios say that on the island, beside the mountain called Pelinnaeus, in a glen thickly wooded and full of tall trees, there was a serpent of the greatest size, at whose very hiss the inhabitants of Chios used to shudder. None therefore of the farmers or herdsmen dared, coming near, to judge its size, but from the hiss alone believed the beast to be monstrous and terrifying; and yet it was learned how great it was in size, by a divine and marvellous device, by Zeus. For when a violent and harsh wind fell upon them, the trees in the glen were thrown against one another, and the branches, violently dashed, give birth to fire, and a great flame rises up, and embraces the whole place and encircles the beast; and it, cut off and unable to crawl away, is burned up. So when the place was laid bare, all became visible; and the Chians, freed from their fear, came to see, and find the bones of the greatest size and a terrifying head, so that from these it could be guessed how great and of what kind that creature was while still alive.

There is a snake named the seps, and it has the following marvel worth noting. It changes its own colour, and is like the places through which it goes. It bears four hollow teeth in the lower jaw, on which lie membranous sheaths, covering the hollows. From these, when the beast has struck, it then sends forth its venom; and it makes putrefy at once and kills most swiftly.

Megasthenes says that in India there are winged scorpions of the greatest size, and that they drive in their sting much as the European ones do. There are also snakes there, and these too winged; they come not by day but by night, and discharge from themselves a urine which, if it drips upon any body, works putrefaction at once. So much for what Megasthenes says. Polyclitus, however, says that in the same land there are lizards of the greatest size and of many colours, with their skins exceedingly variegated with certain bright dyes, and that they are also very soft to the touch. Lizards, Aristotle says, are bred in the land of the Arabs, and these are two cubits long.

Pammenes, in his work on beasts, says that in Egypt there are scorpions winged and double-stinged (and he says he does not speak by hearsay, but acknowledges this account as his own), and snakes with two heads, which have two feet at the tail. Ctesias of Cnidos says that about the Persian Sittace there is a river named the Argades. Many snakes are bred in it, black in the body except for the head; that is white. These snakes extend to a fathom in length. By day they are not seen, but swim under water; by night they kill either those who draw water or those who clean their clothes. And many, it seems, suffer this, either through need when the water fails, or because, being busy by day, they could not wash their clothes.