.

Translated by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Book II

1

With regard to animals in general, some parts or organs are common to all, as has been said, and some are common only to particular genera; the parts, moreover, are identical with or different from one another on the lines already repeatedly laid down. For as a general rule all animals that are generically distinct have the majority of their parts or organs different in form or species; and some of them they have only analogically similar and diverse in kind or genus, while they have others that are alike in kind but specifically diverse; and many parts or organs exist in some animals, but not in others.

For instance, viviparous quadrupeds have all a head and a neck, and all the parts or organs of the head, but they differ each from other in the shapes of the parts. The lion has its neck composed of one single bone instead of vertebrae; but, when dissected, the animal is found in all internal characters to resemble the dog.

The quadrupedal vivipara instead of arms have forelegs. This is true of all quadrupeds, but such of them as have toes have, practically speaking, organs analogous to hands; at all events, they use these fore-limbs for many purposes as hands. And they have the limbs on the left-hand side less distinct from those on the right than man.

The fore-limbs then serve more or less the purpose of hands in quadrupeds, with the exception of the elephant. This latter animal has its toes somewhat indistinctly defined, and its front legs are much bigger than its hinder ones; it is five-toed, and has short ankles to its hind feet. But it has a nose such in properties and such in size as to allow of its using the same for a hand. For it eats and drinks by lifting up its food with the aid of this organ into its mouth, and with the same organ it lifts up articles to the driver on its back; with this organ it can pluck up trees by the roots, and when walking through water it spouts the water up by means of it; and this organ is capable of being crooked or coiled at the tip, but not of flexing like a joint, for it is composed of gristle.

Of all animals man alone can learn to make equal use of both hands.

All animals have a part analogous to the chest in man, but not similar to his; for the chest in man is broad, but that of all other animals is narrow. Moreover, no other animal but man has breasts in front; the elephant, certainly, has two breasts, not however in the chest, but near it.

Moreover, also, animals have the flexions of their fore and hind limbs in directions opposite to one another, and in directions the reverse of those observed in the arms and legs of man; with the exception of the elephant. In other words, with the viviparous quadrupeds the front legs bend forwards and the hind ones backwards, and the concavities of the two pairs of limbs thus face one another.

The elephant does not sleep standing, as some were wont to assert, but it bends its legs and settles down; only that in consequence of its weight it cannot bend its leg on both sides simultaneously, but falls into a recumbent position on one side or the other, and in this position it goes to sleep. And it bends its hind legs just as a man bends his legs.

In the case of the ovipara, as the crocodile and the lizard and the like, both pairs of legs, fore and hind, bend forwards, with a slight swerve on one side. The flexion is similar in the case of the multipeds; only that the legs in between the extreme ends always move in a manner intermediate between that of those in front and those behind, and accordingly bend sideways rather than backwards or forwards. But man bends his arms and his legs towards the same point, and therefore in opposite ways: that is to say, he bends his arms backwards, with just a slight inclination inwards, and his legs frontwards. No animal bends both its fore-limbs and hind-limbs backwards; but in the case of all animals the flexion of the shoulders is in the opposite direction to that of the elbows or the joints of the forelegs, and the flexure in the hips to that of the knees of the hind-legs: so that since man differs from other animals in flexion, those animals that possess such parts as these move them contrariwise to man.

Birds have the flexions of their limbs like those of the quadrupeds; for, although bipeds, they bend their legs backwards, and instead of arms or front legs have wings which bend frontwards.

The seal is a kind of imperfect or crippled quadruped; for just behind the shoulder-blade its front feet are placed, resembling hands, like the front paws of the bear; for they are furnished with five toes, and each of the toes has three flexions and a nail of inconsiderable size. The hind feet are also furnished with five toes; in their flexions and nails they resemble the front feet, and in shape they resemble a fish’s tail.

The movements of animals, quadruped and multiped, are crosswise, or in diagonals, and their equilibrium in standing posture is maintained crosswise; and it is always the limb on the right-hand side that is the first to move. The lion, however, and the two species of camels, both the Bactrian and the Arabian, progress by an amble; and the action so called is when the animal never overpasses the right with the left, but always follows close upon it.

Whatever parts men have in front, these parts quadrupeds have below, in or on the belly; and whatever parts men have behind, these parts quadrupeds have above on their backs. Most quadrupeds have a tail; for even the seal has a tiny one resembling that of the stag. Regarding the tails of the pithecoids we must give their distinctive properties by and by animal

All viviparous quadrupeds are hair-coated, whereas man has only a few short hairs excepting on the head, but, so far as the head is concerned, he is hairier than any other animal. Further, of hair-coated animals, the back is hairier than the belly, which latter is either comparatively void of hair or smooth and void of hair altogether. With man the reverse is the case.

Man also has upper and lower eyelashes, and hair under the armpits and on the pubes. No other animal has hair in either of these localities, or has an under eyelash; though in the case of some animals a few straggling hairs grow under the eyelid.

Of hair-coated quadrupeds some are hairy all over the body, as the pig, the bear, and the dog; others are especially hairy on the neck and all round about it, as is the case with animals that have a shaggy mane, such as the lion; others again are especially hairy on the upper surface of the neck from the head as far as the withers, namely, such as have a crested mane, as in the case with the horse, the mule, and, among the undomesticated horned animals, the bison.

The so-called hippelaphus also has a mane on its withers, and the animal called pardion, in either case a thin mane extending from the head to the withers; the hippelaphus has, exceptionally, a beard by the larynx. Both these animals have horns and are cloven-footed; the female, however, of the hippelaphus has no horns. This latter animal resembles the stag in size; it is found in the territory of the Arachotae, where the wild cattle also are found. Wild cattle differ from their domesticated congeners just as the wild boar differs from the domesticated one. That is to say they are black, strong looking, with a hook-nosed muzzle, and with horns lying more over the back. The horns of the hippelaphus resemble those of the gazelle.

The elephant, by the way, is the least hairy of all quadrupeds. With animals, as a general rule, the tail corresponds with the body as regards thickness or thinness of hair-coating; that is, with animals that have long tails, for some creatures have tails of altogether insignificant size.

Camels have an exceptional organ wherein they differ from all other animals, and that is the so-called ‘hump’ on their back. The Bactrian camel differs from the Arabian; for the former has two humps and the latter only one, though it has, by the way, a kind of a hump below like the one above, on which, when it kneels, the weight of the whole body rests. The camel has four teats like the cow, a tail like that of an ass, and the privy parts of the male are directed backwards. It has one knee in each leg, and the flexures of the limb are not manifold, as some say, although they appear to be so from the constricted shape of the region of the belly. It has a huckle-bone like that of kine, but meagre and small in proportion to its bulk. It is cloven-footed, and has not got teeth in both jaws; and it is cloven footed in the following way: at the back there is a slight cleft extending as far up as the second joint of the toes; and in front there are small hooves on the tip of the first joint of the toes; and a sort of web passes across the cleft, as in geese. The foot is fleshy underneath, like that of the bear; so that, when the animal goes to war, they protect its feet, when they get sore, with sandals.

The legs of all quadrupeds are bony, sinewy, and fleshless; and in point of fact such is the case with all animals that are furnished with feet, with the exception of man. They are also unfurnished with buttocks; and this last point is plain in an especial degree in birds. It is the reverse with man; for there is scarcely any part of the body in which man is so fleshy as in the buttock, the thigh, and the calf; for the part of the leg called gastroenemia or is fleshy.

Of blooded and viviparous quadrupeds some have the foot cloven into many parts, as is the case with the hands and feet of man (for some animals, by the way, are many-toed, as the lion, the dog, and the pard); others have feet cloven in twain, and instead of nails have hooves, as the sheep, the goat, the deer, and the hippopotamus; others are uncloven of foot, such for instance as the solid-hooved animals, the horse and the mule. Swine are either cloven-footed or uncloven-footed; for there are in Illyria and in Paeonia and elsewhere solid-hooved swine. The cloven-footed animals have two clefts behind; in the solid-hooved this part is continuous and undivided.

Furthermore, of animals some are horned, and some are not so. The great majority of the horned animals are cloven-footed, as the ox, the stag, the goat; and a solid-hooved animal with a pair of horns has never yet been met with. But a few animals are known to be singled-horned and single-hooved, as the Indian ass; and one, to wit the oryx, is single horned and cloven-hooved.

Of all solid-hooved animals the Indian ass alone has an astragalus or huckle-bone; for the pig, as was said above, is either solid-hooved or cloven-footed, and consequently has no well-formed huckle-bone. Of the cloven footed many are provided with a huckle-bone. Of the many-fingered or many-toed, no single one has been observed to have a huckle-bone, none of the others any more than man. The lynx, however, has something like a hemiastragal, and the lion something resembling the sculptor’s ‘labyrinth’. All the animals that have a huckle-bone have it in the hinder legs. They have also the bone placed straight up in the joint; the upper part, outside; the lower part, inside; the sides called Coa turned towards one another, the sides called Chia outside, and the keraiae or ‘horns’ on the top. This, then, is the position of the hucklebone in the case of all animals provided with the part.

Some animals are, at one and the same time, furnished with a mane and furnished also with a pair of horns bent in towards one another, as is the bison (or aurochs), which is found in Paeonia and Maedica. But all animals that are horned are quadrupedal, except in cases where a creature is said metaphorically, or by a figure of speech, to have horns; just as the Egyptians describe the serpents found in the neighbourhood of Thebes, while in point of fact the creatures have merely protuberances on the head sufficiently large to suggest such an epithet.

Of horned animals the deer alone has a horn, or antler, hard and solid throughout. The horns of other animals are hollow for a certain distance, and solid towards the extremity. The hollow part is derived from the skin, but the core round which this is wrapped-the hard part-is derived from the bones; as is the case with the horns of oxen. The deer is the only animal that sheds its horns, and it does so annually, after reaching the age of two years, and again renews them. All other animals retain their horns permanently, unless the horns be damaged by accident.

Again, with regard to the breasts and the generative organs, animals differ widely from one another and from man. For instance, the breasts of some animals are situated in front, either in the chest or near to it, and there are in such cases two breasts and two teats, as is the case with man and the elephant, as previously stated. For the elephant has two breasts in the region of the axillae; and the female elephant has two breasts insignificant in size and in no way proportionate to the bulk of the entire frame, in fact, so insignificant as to be invisible in a sideways view; the males also have breasts, like the females, exceedingly small. The she-bear has four breasts. Some animals have two breasts, but situated near the thighs, and teats, likewise two in number, as the sheep; others have four teats, as the cow. Some have breasts neither in the chest nor at the thighs, but in the belly, as the dog and pig; and they have a considerable number of breasts or dugs, but not all of equal size. Thus the shepard has four dugs in the belly, the lioness two, and others more. The she-camel, also, has two dugs and four teats, like the cow. Of solid-hooved animals the males have no dugs, excepting in the case of males that take after the mother, which phenomenon is observable in horses.

Of male animals the genitals of some are external, as is the case with man, the horse, and most other creatures; some are internal, as with the dolphin. With those that have the organ externally placed, the organ in some cases is situated in front, as in the cases already mentioned, and of these some have the organ detached, both penis and testicles, as man; others have penis and testicles closely attached to the belly, some more closely, some less; for this organ is not detached in the wild boar nor in the horse.

The penis of the elephant resembles that of the horse; compared with the size of the animal it is disproportionately small; the testicles are not visible, but are concealed inside in the vicinity of the kidneys; and for this reason the male speedily gives over in the act of intercourse. The genitals of the female are situated where the udder is in sheep; when she is in heat, she draws the organ back and exposes it externally, to facilitate the act of intercourse for the male; and the organ opens out to a considerable extent.

With most animals the genitals have the position above assigned; but some animals discharge their urine backwards, as the lynx, the lion, the camel, and the hare. Male animals differ from one another, as has been said, in this particular, but all female animals are retromingent: even the female elephant like other animals, though she has the privy part below the thighs.

In the male organ itself there is a great diversity. For in some cases the organ is composed of flesh and gristle, as in man; in such cases, the fleshy part does not become inflated, but the gristly part is subject to enlargement. In other cases, the organ is composed of fibrous tissue, as with the camel and the deer; in other cases it is bony, as with the fox, the wolf, the marten, and the weasel; for this organ in the weasel has a bone.

When man has arrived at maturity, his upper part is smaller than the lower one, but with all other blooded animals the reverse holds good. By the ‘upper’ part we mean all extending from the head down to the parts used for excretion of residuum, and by the ‘lower’ part else. With animals that have feet the hind legs are to be rated as the lower part in our comparison of magnitudes, and with animals devoid of feet, the tail, and the like.

When animals arrive at maturity, their properties are as above stated; but they differ greatly from one another in their growth towards maturity. For instance, man, when young, has his upper part larger than the lower, but in course of growth he comes to reverse this condition; and it is owing to this circumstance that-an exceptional instance, by the way-he does not progress in early life as he does at maturity, but in infancy creeps on all fours; but some animals, in growth, retain the relative proportion of the parts, as the dog. Some animals at first have the upper part smaller and the lower part larger, and in course of growth the upper part gets to be the larger, as is the case with the bushy-tailed animals such as the horse; for in their case there is never, subsequently to birth, any increase in the part extending from the hoof to the haunch.

Again, in respect to the teeth, animals differ greatly both from one another and from man. All animals that are quadrupedal, blooded and viviparous, are furnished with teeth; but, to begin with, some are double-toothed (or fully furnished with teeth in both jaws), and some are not. For instance, horned quadrupeds are not double-toothed; for they have not got the front teeth in the upper jaw; and some hornless animals, also, are not double toothed, as the camel. Some animals have tusks, like the boar, and some have not. Further, some animals are saw-toothed, such as the lion, the pard, and the dog; and some have teeth that do not interlock but have flat opposing crowns, as the horse and the ox; and by ‘saw-toothed’ we mean such animals as interlock the sharp-pointed teeth in one jaw between the sharp-pointed ones in the other. No animal is there that possesses both tusks and horns, nor yet do either of these structures exist in any animal possessed of ‘saw-teeth’. The front teeth are usually sharp, and the back ones blunt. The seal is saw-toothed throughout, inasmuch as he is a sort of link with the class of fishes; for fishes are almost all saw-toothed.

No animal of these genera is provided with double rows of teeth. There is, however, an animal of the sort, if we are to believe Ctesias. He assures us that the Indian wild beast called the ‘martichoras’ has a triple row of teeth in both upper and lower jaw; that it is as big as a lion and equally hairy, and that its feet resemble those of the lion; that it resembles man in its face and ears; that its eyes are blue, and its colour vermilion; that its tail is like that of the land-scorpion; that it has a sting in the tail, and has the faculty of shooting off arrow-wise the spines that are attached to the tail; that the sound of its voice is a something between the sound of a pan-pipe and that of a trumpet; that it can run as swiftly as deer, and that it is savage and a man-eater.

Man sheds his teeth, and so do other animals, as the horse, the mule, and the ass. And man sheds his front teeth; but there is no instance of an animal that sheds its molars. The pig sheds none of its teeth at all.

With regard to dogs some doubts are entertained, as some contend that they shed no teeth whatever, and others that they shed the canines, but those alone; the fact being, that they do shed their teeth like man, but that the circumstance escapes observation, owing to the fact that they never shed them until equivalent teeth have grown within the gums to take the place of the shed ones. We shall be justified in supposing that the case is similar with wild beasts in general; for they are said to shed their canines only. Dogs can be distinguished from one another, the young from the old, by their teeth; for the teeth in young dogs are white and sharp-pointed; in old dogs, black and blunt.

In this particular, the horse differs entirely from animals in general: for, generally speaking, as animals grow older their teeth get blacker, but the horse’s teeth grow whiter with age.

The so-called ‘canines’ come in between the sharp teeth and the broad or blunt ones, partaking of the form of both kinds; for they are broad at the base and sharp at the tip.

Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine; in the case of other animals observations have not yet been made: but the more teeth they have the more long-lived are they, as a rule, while those are short-lived in proportion that have teeth fewer in number and thinly set.

The last teeth to come in man are molars called ‘wisdom-teeth’, which come at the age of twenty years, in the case of both sexes. Cases have been known in women upwards. of eighty years old where at the very close of life the wisdom-teeth have come up, causing great pain in their coming; and cases have been known of the like phenomenon in men too. This happens, when it does happen, in the case of people where the wisdom-teeth have not come up in early years.

The elephant has four teeth on either side, by which it munches its food, grinding it like so much barley-meal, and, quite apart from these, it has its great teeth, or tusks, two in number. In the male these tusks are comparatively large and curved upwards; in the female, they are comparatively small and point in the opposite direction; that is, they look downwards towards the ground. The elephant is furnished with teeth at birth, but the tusks are not then visible.

The tongue of the elephant is exceedingly small, and situated far back in the mouth, so that it is difficult to get a sight of it.

Furthermore, animals differ from one another in the relative size of their mouths. In some animals the mouth opens wide, as is the case with the dog, the lion, and with all the saw-toothed animals; other animals have small mouths, as man; and others have mouths of medium capacity, as the pig and his congeners.

(The Egyptian hippopotamus has a mane like a horse, is cloven-footed like an ox, and is snub-nosed. It has a huckle-bone like cloven-footed animals, and tusks just visible; it has the tail of a pig, the neigh of a horse, and the dimensions of an ass. The hide is so thick that spears are made out of it. In its internal organs it resembles the horse and the ass.)

Some animals share the properties of man and the quadrupeds, as the ape, the monkey, and the baboon. The monkey is a tailed ape. The baboon resembles the ape in form, only that it is bigger and stronger, more like a dog in face, and is more savage in its habits, and its teeth are more dog-like and more powerful.

Apes are hairy on the back in keeping with their quadrupedal nature, and hairy on the belly in keeping with their human form-for, as was said above, this characteristic is reversed in man and the quadruped-only that the hair is coarse, so that the ape is thickly coated both on the belly and on the back. Its face resembles that of man in many respects; in other words, it has similar nostrils and ears, and teeth like those of man, both front teeth and molars. Further, whereas quadrupeds in general are not furnished with lashes on one of the two eyelids, this creature has them on both, only very thinly set, especially the under ones; in fact they are very insignificant indeed. And we must bear in mind that all other quadrupeds have no under eyelash at all.

The ape has also in its chest two teats upon poorly developed breasts. It has also arms like man, only covered with hair, and it bends these legs like man, with the convexities of both limbs facing one another. In addition, it has hands and fingers and nails like man, only that all these parts are somewhat more beast-like in appearance. Its feet are exceptional in kind. That is, they are like large hands, and the toes are like fingers, with the middle one the longest of all, and the under part of the foot is like a hand except for its length, and stretches out towards the extremities like the palm of the hand; and this palm at the after end is unusually hard, and in a clumsy obscure kind of way resembles a heel. The creature uses its feet either as hands or feet, and doubles them up as one doubles a fist. Its upper-arm and thigh are short in proportion to the forearm and the shin. It has no projecting navel, but only a hardness in the ordinary locality of the navel. Its upper part is much larger than its lower part, as is the case with quadrupeds; in fact, the proportion of the former to the latter is about as five to three. Owing to this circumstance and to the fact that its feet resemble hands and are composed in a manner of hand and of foot: of foot in the heel extremity, of the hand in all else-for even the toes have what is called a ‘palm’:-for these reasons the animal is oftener to be found on all fours than upright. It has neither hips, inasmuch as it is a quadruped, nor yet a tail, inasmuch as it is a biped, except nor yet a tal by the way that it has a tail as small as small can be, just a sort of indication of a tail. The genitals of the female resemble those of the female in the human species; those of the male are more like those of a dog than are those of a man.

The monkey, as has been observed, is furnished with a tail. In all such creatures the internal organs are found under dissection to correspond to those of man.

So much then for the properties of the organs of such animals as bring forth their young into the world alive.

Oviparous and blooded quadrupeds-and, by the way, no terrestrial blooded animal is oviparous unless it is quadrupedal or is devoid of feet altogether-are furnished with a head, a neck, a back, upper and under parts, the front legs and hind legs, and the part analogous to the chest, all as in the case of viviparous quadrupeds, and with a tail, usually large, in exceptional cases small. And all these creatures are many-toed, and the several toes are cloven apart. Furthermore, they all have the ordinary organs of sensation, including a tongue, with the exception of the Egyptian crocodile.

This latter animal, by the way, resembles certain fishes. For, as a general rule, fishes have a prickly tongue, not free in its movements; though there are some fishes that present a smooth undifferentiated surface where the tongue should be, until you open their mouths wide and make a close inspection.

Again, oviparous blooded quadrupeds are unprovided with ears, but possess only the passage for hearing; neither have they breasts, nor a copulatory organ, nor external testicles, but internal ones only; neither are they hair coated, but are in all cases covered with scaly plates. Moreover, they are without exception saw-toothed.

River crocodiles have pigs’ eyes, large teeth and tusks, and strong nails, and an impenetrable skin composed of scaly plates. They see but poorly under water, but above the surface of it with remarkable acuteness. As a rule, they pass the day-time on land and the nighttime in the water; for the temperature of the water is at night-time more genial than that of the open air.

The chameleon resembles the lizard in the general configuration of its body, but the ribs stretch downwards and meet together under the belly as is the case with fishes, and the spine sticks up as with the fish. Its face resembles that of the baboon. Its tail is exceedingly long, terminates in a sharp point, and is for the most part coiled up, like a strap of leather. It stands higher off the ground than the lizard, but the flexure of the legs is the same in both creatures. Each of its feet is divided into two parts, which bear the same relation to one another that the thumb and the rest of the hand bear to one another in man. Each of these parts is for a short distance divided after a fashion into toes; on the front feet the inside part is divided into three and the outside into two, on the hind feet the inside part into two and the outside into three; it has claws also on these parts resembling those of birds of prey. Its body is rough all over, like that of the crocodile. Its eyes are situated in a hollow recess, and are very large and round, and are enveloped in a skin resembling that which covers the entire body; and in the middle a slight aperture is left for vision, through which the animal sees, for it never covers up this aperture with the cutaneous envelope. It keeps twisting its eyes round and shifting its line of vision in every direction, and thus contrives to get a sight of any object that it wants to see. The change in its colour takes place when it is inflated with air; it is then black, not unlike the crocodile, or green like the lizard but black-spotted like the pard. This change of colour takes place over the whole body alike, for the eyes and the tail come alike under its influence. In its movements it is very sluggish, like the tortoise. It assumes a greenish hue in dying, and retains this hue after death. It resembles the lizard in the position of the oesophagus and the windpipe. It has no flesh anywhere except a few scraps of flesh on the head and on the jaws and near to the root of the tail. It has blood only round about the heart, the eyes, the region above the heart, and in all the veins extending from these parts; and in all these there is but little blood after all. The brain is situated a little above the eyes, but connected with them. When the outer skin is drawn aside from off the eye, a something is found surrounding the eye, that gleams through like a thin ring of copper. Membranes extend well nigh over its entire frame, numerous and strong, and surpassing in respect of number and relative strength those found in any other animal. After being cut open along its entire length it continues to breathe for a considerable time; a very slight motion goes on in the region of the heart, and, while contraction is especially manifested in the neighbourhood of the ribs, a similar motion is more or less discernible over the whole body. It has no spleen visible. It hibernates, like the lizard.

Birds also in some parts resemble the above mentioned animals; that is to say, they have in all cases a head, a neck, a back, a belly, and what is analogous to the chest. The bird is remarkable among animals as having two feet, like man; only, by the way, it bends them backwards as quadrupeds bend their hind legs, as was noticed previously. It has neither hands nor front feet, but wings-an exceptional structure as compared with other animals. Its haunch-bone is long, like a thigh, and is attached to the body as far as the middle of the belly; so like to a thigh is it that when viewed separately it looks like a real one, while the real thigh is a separate structure betwixt it and the shin. Of all birds those that have crooked talons have the biggest thighs and the strongest breasts. All birds are furnished with many claws, and all have the toes separated more or less asunder; that is to say, in the greater part the toes are clearly distinct from one another, for even the swimming birds, although they are web-footed, have still their claws fully articulated and distinctly differentiated from one another. Birds that fly high in air are in all cases four-toed: that is, the greater part have three toes in front and one behind in place of a heel; some few have two in front and two behind, as the wryneck.

This latter bird is somewhat bigger than the chaffinch, and is mottled in appearance. It is peculiar in the arrangement of its toes, and resembles the snake in the structure of its tongue; for the creature can protrude its tongue to the extent of four finger-breadths, and then draw it back again. Moreover, it can twist its head backwards while keeping all the rest of its body still, like the serpent. It has big claws, somewhat resembling those of the woodpecker. Its note is a shrill chirp.

Birds are furnished with a mouth, but with an exceptional one, for they have neither lips nor teeth, but a beak. Neither have they ears nor a nose, but only passages for the sensations connected with these organs: that for the nostrils in the beak, and that for hearing in the head. Like all other animals they all have two eyes, and these are devoid of lashes. The heavy-bodied (or gallinaceous) birds close the eye by means of the lower lid, and all birds blink by means of a skin extending over the eye from the inner corner; the owl and its congeners also close the eye by means of the upper lid. The same phenomenon is observable in the animals that are protected by horny scutes, as in the lizard and its congeners; for they all without exception close the eye with the lower lid, but they do not blink like birds. Further, birds have neither scutes nor hair, but feathers; and the feathers are invariably furnished with quills. They have no tail, but a rump with tail-feathers, short in such as are long-legged and web-footed, large in others. These latter kinds of birds fly with their feet tucked up close to the belly; but the small rumped or short-tailed birds fly with their legs stretched out at full length. All are furnished with a tongue, but the organ is variable, being long in some birds and broad in others. Certain species of birds above all other animals, and next after man, possess the faculty of uttering articulate sounds; and this faculty is chiefly developed in broad-tongued birds. No oviparous creature has an epiglottis over the windpipe, but these animals so manage the opening and shutting of the windpipe as not to allow any solid substance to get down into the lung.

Some species of birds are furnished additionally with spurs, but no bird with crooked talons is found so provided. The birds with talons are among those that fly well, but those that have spurs are among the heavy-bodied.

Again, some birds have a crest. As a general rule the crest sticks up, and is composed of feathers only; but the crest of the barn-door cock is exceptional in kind, for, whereas it is not just exactly flesh, at the same time it is not easy to say what else it is.

Of water animals the genus of fishes constitutes a single group apart from the rest, and including many diverse forms.

In the first place, the fish has a head, a back, a belly, in the neighbourhood of which last are placed the stomach and viscera; and behind it has a tail of continuous, undivided shape, but not, by the way, in all cases alike. No fish has a neck, or any limb, or testicles at all, within or without, or breasts. But, by the way this absence of breasts may predicated of all non-viviparous animals; and in point of fact viviparous animals are not in all cases provided with the organ, excepting such as are directly viviparous without being first oviparous. Thus the dolphin is directly viviparous, and accordingly we find it furnished with two breasts, not situated high up, but in the neighbourhood of the genitals. And this creature is not provided, like quadrupeds, with visible teats, but has two vents, one on each flank, from which the milk flows; and its young have to follow after it to get suckled, and this phenomenon has been actually witnessed.

Fishes, then, as has been observed, have no breasts and no passage for the genitals visible externally. But they have an exceptional organ in the gills, whereby, after taking the water in the mouth, they discharge it again; and in the fins, of which the greater part have four, and the lanky ones two, as, for instance, the eel, and these two situated near to the gills. In like manner the grey mullet-as, for instance, the mullet found in the lake at Siphae-have only two fins; and the same is the case with the fish called Ribbon-fish. Some of the lanky fishes have no fins at all, such as the muraena, nor gills articulated like those of other fish.

And of those fish that are provided with gills, some have coverings for this organ, whereas all the selachians have the organ unprotected by a cover. And those fishes that have coverings or opercula for the gills have in all cases their gills placed sideways; whereas, among selachians, the broad ones have the gills down below on the belly, as the torpedo and the ray, while the lanky ones have the organ placed sideways, as is the case in all the dog-fish.

The fishing-frog has gills placed sideways, and covered not with a spiny operculum, as in all but the selachian fishes, but with one of skin.

Morever, with fishes furnished with gills, the gills in some cases are simple in others duplicate; and the last gill in the direction of the body is always simple. And, again, some fishes have few gills, and others have a great number; but all alike have the same number on both sides. Those that have the least number have one gill on either side, and this one duplicate, like the boar-fish; others have two on either side, one simple and the other duplicate, like the conger and the scarus; others have four on either side, simple, as the elops, the synagris, the muraena, and the eel; others have four, all, with the exception of the hindmost one, in double rows, as the wrasse, the perch, the sheat-fish, and the carp. The dog-fish have all their gills double, five on a side; and the sword-fish has eight double gills. So much for the number of gills as found in fishes.

Again, fishes differ from other animals in more ways than as regards the gills. For they are not covered with hairs as are viviparous land animals, nor, as is the case with certain oviparous quadrupeds, with tessellated scutes, nor, like birds, with feathers; but for the most part they are covered with scales. Some few are rough-skinned, while the smooth-skinned are very few indeed. Of the Selachia some are rough-skinned and some smooth-skinned; and among the smooth-skinned fishes are included the conger, the eel, and the tunny.

All fishes are saw-toothed excepting the scarus; and the teeth in all cases are sharp and set in many rows, and in some cases are placed on the tongue. The tongue is hard and spiny, and so firmly attached that fishes in many instances seem to be devoid of the organ altogether. The mouth in some cases is wide-stretched, as it is with some viviparous quadrupeds....

With regard to organs of sense, all save eyes, fishes possess none of them, neither the organs nor their passages, neither ears nor nostrils; but all fishes are furnished with eyes, and the eyes devoid of lids, though the eyes are not hard; with regard to the organs connected with the other senses, hearing and smell, they are devoid alike of the organs themselves and of passages indicative of them.

Fishes without exception are supplied with blood. Some of them are oviparous, and some viviparous; scaly fish are invariably oviparous, but cartilaginous fishes are all viviparous, with the single exception of the fishing-frog.

Of blooded animals there now remains the serpent genus. This genus is common to both elements, for, while most species comprehended therein are land animals, a small minority, to wit the aquatic species, pass their lives in fresh water. There are also sea-serpents, in shape to a great extent resembling their congeners of the land, with this exception that the head in their case is somewhat like the head of the conger; and there are several kinds of sea-serpent, and the different kinds differ in colour; these animals are not found in very deep water. Serpents, like fish, are devoid of feet.

There are also sea-scolopendras, resembling in shape their land congeners, but somewhat less in regard to magnitude. These creatures are found in the neighbourhood of rocks; as compared with their land congeners they are redder in colour, are furnished with feet in greater numbers and with legs of more delicate structure. And the same remark applies to them as to the sea-serpents, that they are not found in very deep water.

Of fishes whose habitat is in the vicinity of rocks there is a tiny one, which some call the Echeneis, or ‘ship-holder’, and which is by some people used as a charm to bring luck in affairs of law and love. The creature is unfit for eating. Some people assert that it has feet, but this is not the case: it appears, however, to be furnished with feet from the fact that its fins resemble those organs.

So much, then, for the external parts of blooded animals, as regards their numbers, their properties, and their relative diversities.

As for the properties of the internal organs, these we must first discuss in the case of the animals that are supplied with blood. For the principal genera differ from the rest of animals, in that the former are supplied with blood and the latter are not; and the former include man, viviparous and oviparous quadrupeds, birds, fishes, cetaceans, and all the others that come under no general designation by reason of their not forming genera, but groups of which simply the specific name is predicable, as when we say ‘the serpent,’ the ‘crocodile’.

All viviparous quadrupeds, then, are furnished with an oesophagus and a windpipe, situated as in man; the same statement is applicable to oviparous quadrupeds and to birds, only that the latter present diversities in the shapes of these organs. As a general rule, all animals that take up air and breathe it in and out are furnished with a lung, a windpipe, and an oesophagus, with the windpipe and oesophagus not admitting of diversity in situation but admitting of diversity in properties, and with the lung admitting of diversity in both these respects. Further, all blooded animals have a heart and a diaphragm or midriff; but in small animals the existence of the latter organ is not so obvious owing to its delicacy and minute size.

In regard to the heart there is an exceptional phenomenon observable in oxen. In other words, there is one species of ox where, though not in all cases, a bone is found inside the heart. And, by the way, the horse’s heart also has a bone inside it.

The genera referred to above are not in all cases furnished with a lung: for instance, the fish is devoid of the organ, as is also every animal furnished with gills. All blooded animals are furnished with a liver. As a general rule blooded animals are furnished with a spleen; but with the great majority of non-viviparous but oviparous animals the spleen is so small as all but to escape observation; and this is the case with almost all birds, as with the pigeon, the kite, the falcon, the owl: in point of fact, the aegocephalus is devoid of the organ altogether. With oviparous quadrupeds the case is much the same as with the viviparous; that is to say, they also have the spleen exceedingly minute, as the tortoise, the freshwater tortoise, the toad, the lizard, the crocodile, and the frog.

Some animals have a gall-bladder close to the liver, and others have not. Of viviparous quadrupeds the deer is without the organ, as also the roe, the horse, the mule, the ass, the seal, and some kinds of pigs. Of deer those that are called Achainae appear to have gall in their tail, but what is so called does resemble gall in colour, though it is not so completely fluid, and the organ internally resembles a spleen.

However, without any exception, stags are found to have maggots living inside the head, and the habitat of these creatures is in the hollow underneath the root of the tongue and in the neighbourhood of the vertebra to which the head is attached. These creatures are as large as the largest grubs; they grow all together in a cluster, and they are usually about twenty in number.

Deer then, as has been observed, are without a gall-bladder; their gut, however, is so bitter that even hounds refuse to eat it unless the animal is exceptionally fat. With the elephant also the liver is unfurnished with a gall-bladder, but when the animal is cut in the region where the organ is found in animals furnished with it, there oozes out a fluid resembling gall, in greater or less quantities. Of animals that take in sea-water and are furnished with a lung, the dolphin is unprovided with a gall-bladder. Birds and fishes all have the organ, as also oviparous quadrupeds, all to a greater or a lesser extent. But of fishes some have the organ close to the liver, as the dogfishes, the sheat-fish, the rhine or angel-fish, the smooth skate, the torpedo, and, of the lanky fishes, the eel, the pipe-fish, and the hammer-headed shark. The callionymus, also, has the gall-bladder close to the liver, and in no other fish does the organ attain so great a relative size. Other fishes have the organ close to the gut, attached to the liver by certain extremely fine ducts. The bonito has the gall-bladder stretched alongside the gut and equalling it in length, and often a double fold of it. others have the organ in the region of the gut; in some cases far off, in others near; as the fishing-frog, the elops, the synagris, the muraena, and the sword-fish. Often animals of the same species show this diversity of position; as, for instance, some congers are found with the organ attached close to the liver, and others with it detached from and below it. The case is much the same with birds: that is, some have the gall-bladder close to the stomach, and others close to the gut, as the pigeon, the raven, the quail, the swallow, and the sparrow; some have it near at once to the liver and to the stomach as the aegocephalus; others have it near at once to the liver and the gut, as the falcon and the kite.

Again, all viviparous quadrupeds are furnished with kidneys and a bladder. Of the ovipara that are not quadrupedal there is no instance known of an animal, whether fish or bird, provided with these organs. Of the ovipara that are quadrupedal, the turtle alone is provided with these organs of a magnitude to correspond with the other organs of the animal. In the turtle the kidney resembles the same organ in the ox; that is to say, it looks one single organ composed of a number of small ones. (The bison also resembles the ox in all its internal parts).

With all animals that are furnished with these parts, the parts are similarly situated, and with the exception of man, the heart is in the middle; in man, however, as has been observed, the heart is placed a little to the left-hand side. In all animals the pointed end of the heart turns frontwards; only in fish it would at first sight seem otherwise, for the pointed end is turned not towards the breast, but towards the head and the mouth. And (in fish) the apex is attached to a tube just where the right and left gills meet together. There are other ducts extending from the heart to each of the gills, greater in the greater fish, lesser in the lesser; but in the large fishes the duct at the pointed end of the heart is a tube, white-coloured and exceedingly thick. Fishes in some few cases have an oesophagus, as the conger and the eel; and in these the organ is small.

In fishes that are furnished with an undivided liver, the organ lies entirely on the right side; where the liver is cloven from the root, the larger half of the organ is on the right side: for in some fishes the two parts are detached from one another, without any coalescence at the root, as is the case with the dogfish. And there is also a species of hare in what is named the Fig district, near Lake Bolbe, and elsewhere, which animal might be taken to have two livers owing to the length of the connecting ducts, similar to the structure in the lung of birds.

The spleen in all cases, when normally placed, is on the left-hand side, and the kidneys also lie in the same position in all creatures that possess them. There have been known instances of quadrupeds under dissection, where the spleen was on the right hand and the liver on the left; but all such cases are regarded as supernatural.

In all animals the wind-pipe extends to the lung, and the manner how, we shall discuss hereafter; and the oesophagus, in all that have the organ, extends through the midriff into the stomach. For, by the way, as has been observed, most fishes have no oesophagus, but the stomach is united directly with the mouth, so that in some cases when big fish are pursuing little ones, the stomach tumbles forward into the mouth.

All the afore-mentioned animals have a stomach, and one similarly situated, that is to say, situated directly under the midriff; and they have a gut connected therewith and closing at the outlet of the residuum and at what is termed the ‘rectum’. However, animals present diversities in the structure of their stomachs. In the first place, of the viviparous quadrupeds, such of the horned animals as are not equally furnished with teeth in both jaws are furnished with four such chambers. These animals, by the way, are those that are said to chew the cud. In these animals the oesophagus extends from the mouth downwards along the lung, from the midriff to the big stomach (or paunch); and this stomach is rough inside and semi-partitioned. And connected with it near to the entry of the oesophagus is what from its appearance is termed the ‘reticulum’ (or honeycomb bag); for outside it is like the stomach, but inside it resembles a netted cap; and the reticulum is a great deal smaller than the stomach. Connected with this is the ‘echinus’ (or many-plies), rough inside and laminated, and of about the same size as the reticulum. Next after this comes what is called the ‘enystrum’ (or abomasum), larger an longer than the echinus, furnished inside with numerous folds or ridges, large and smooth. After all this comes the gut.

Such is the stomach of those quadrupeds that are horned and have an unsymmetrical dentition; and these animals differ one from another in the shape and size of the parts, and in the fact of the oesophagus reaching the stomach centralwise in some cases and sideways in others. Animals that are furnished equally with teeth in both jaws have one stomach; as man, the pig, the dog, the bear, the lion, the wolf. (The Thos, by the by, has all its internal organs similar to the wolf’s.)

All these, then have a single stomach, and after that the gut; but the stomach in some is comparatively large, as in the pig and bear, and the stomach of the pig has a few smooth folds or ridges; others have a much smaller stomach, not much bigger than the gut, as the lion, the dog, and man. In the other animals the shape of the stomach varies in the direction of one or other of those already mentioned; that is, the stomach in some animals resembles that of the pig; in others that of the dog, alike with the larger animals and the smaller ones. In all these animals diversities occur in regard to the size, the shape, the thickness or the thinness of the stomach, and also in regard to the place where the oesophagus opens into it.

There is also a difference in structure in the gut of the two groups of animals above mentioned (those with unsymmetrical and those with symmetrical dentition) in size, in thickness, and in foldings.

The intestines in those animals whose jaws are unequally furnished with teeth are in all cases the larger, for the animals themselves are larger than those in the other category; for very few of them are small, and no single one of the horned animals is very small. And some possess appendages (or caeca) to the gut, but no animal that has not incisors in both jaws has a straight gut.

The elephant has a gut constricted into chambers, so constructed that the animal appears to have four stomachs; in it the food is found, but there is no distinct and separate receptacle. Its viscera resemble those of the pig, only that the liver is four times the size of that of the ox, and the other viscera in like proportion, while the spleen is comparatively small.

Much the same may be predicated of the properties of the stomach and the gut in oviparous quadrupeds, as in the land tortoise, the turtle, the lizard, both crocodiles, and, in fact, in all animals of the like kind; that is to say, their stomach is one and simple, resembling in some cases that of the pig, and in other cases that of the dog.

The serpent genus is similar and in almost all respects furnished similarly to the saurians among land animals, if one could only imagine these saurians to be increased in length and to be devoid of legs. That is to say, the serpent is coated with tessellated scutes, and resembles the saurian in its back and belly; only, by the way, it has no testicles, but, like fishes, has two ducts converging into one, and an ovary long and bifurcate. The rest of its internal organs are identical with those of the saurians, except that, owing to the narrowness and length of the animal, the viscera are correspondingly narrow and elongated, so that they are apt to escape recognition from the similarities in shape. Thus, the windpipe of the creature is exceptionally long, and the oesophagus is longer still, and the windpipe commences so close to the mouth that the tongue appears to be underneath it; and the windpipe seems to project over the tongue, owing to the fact that the tongue draws back into a sheath and does not remain in its place as in other animals. The tongue, moreover, is thin and long and black, and can be protruded to a great distance. And both serpents and saurians have this altogether exceptional property in the tongue, that it is forked at the outer extremity, and this property is the more marked in the serpent, for the tips of his tongue are as thin as hairs. The seal, also, by the way, has a split tongue.

The stomach of the serpent is like a more spacious gut, resembling the stomach of the dog; then comes the gut, long, narrow, and single to the end. The heart is situated close to the pharynx, small and kidney-shaped; and for this reason the organ might in some cases appear not to have the pointed end turned towards the breast. Then comes the lung, single, and articulated with a membranous passage, very long, and quite detached from the heart. The liver is long and simple; the spleen is short and round: as is the case in both respects with the saurians. Its gall resembles that of the fish; the water-snakes have it beside the liver, and the other snakes have it usually beside the gut. These creatures are all saw-toothed. Their ribs are as numerous as the days of the month; in other words, they are thirty in number.

Some affirm that the same phenomenon is observable with serpents as with swallow chicks; in other words, they say that if you prick out a serpent’s eyes they will grow again. And further, the tails of saurians and of serpents, if they be cut off, will grow again.

With fishes the properties of the gut and stomach are similar; that is, they have a stomach single and simple, but variable in shape according to species. For in some cases the stomach is gut-shaped, as with the scarus, or parrot-fish; which fish, by the way, appears to be the only fish that chews the cud. And the whole length of the gut is simple, and if it have a reduplication or kink it loosens out again into a simple form.

An exceptional property in fishes and in birds for the most part is the being furnished with gut-appendages or caeca. Birds have them low down and few in number. Fishes have them high up about the stomach, and sometimes numerous, as in the goby, the galeos, the perch, the scorpaena, the citharus, the red mullet, and the sparus; the cestreus or grey mullet has several of them on one side of the belly, and on the other side only one. Some fish possess these appendages but only in small numbers, as the hepatus and the glaucus; and, by the way, they are few also in the dorado. These fishes differ also from one another within the same species, for in the dorado one individual has many and another few. Some fishes are entirely without the part, as the majority of the selachians. As for all the rest, some of them have a few and some a great many. And in all cases where the gut-appendages are found in fish, they are found close up to the stomach.

In regard to their internal parts birds differ from other animals and from one another. Some birds, for instance, have a crop in front of the stomach, as the barn-door cock, the cushat, the pigeon, and the partridge; and the crop consists of a large hollow skin, into which the food first enters and where it lies ingested. Just where the crop leaves the oesophagus it is somewhat narrow; by and by it broadens out, but where it communicates with the stomach it narrows down again. The stomach (or gizzard) in most birds is fleshy and hard, and inside is a strong skin which comes away from the fleshy part. Other birds have no crop, but instead of it an oesophagus wide and roomy, either all the way or in the part leading to the stomach, as with the daw, the raven, and the carrion-crow. The quail also has the oesophagus widened out at the lower extremity, and in the aegocephalus and the owl the organ is slightly broader at the bottom than at the top. The duck, the goose, the gull, the catarrhactes, and the great bustard have the oesophagus wide and roomy from one end to the other, and the same applies to a great many other birds. In some birds there is a portion of the stomach that resembles a crop, as in the kestrel. In the case of small birds like the swallow and the sparrow neither the oesophagus nor the crop is wide, but the stomach is long. Some few have neither a crop nor a dilated oesophagus, but the latter is exceedingly long, as in long necked birds, such as the porphyrio, and, by the way, in the case of all these birds the excrement is unusually moist. The quail is exceptional in regard to these organs, as compared with other birds; in other words, it has a crop, and at the same time its oesophagus is wide and spacious in front of the stomach, and the crop is at some distance, relatively to its size, from the oesophagus at that part.

Further, in most birds, the gut is thin, and simple when loosened out. The gut-appendages or caeca in birds, as has been observed, are few in number, and are not situated high up, as in fishes, but low down towards the extremity of the gut. Birds, then, have caeca-not all, but the greater part of them, such as the barn-door cock, the partridge, the duck, the night-raven, (the localus,) the ascalaphus, the goose, the swan, the great bustard, and the owl. Some of the little birds also have these appendages; but the caeca in their case are exceedingly minute, as in the sparrow.

Aristotle

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