No More Learning

Other insects are not derived
from living parentage, but are generated spontaneously: some out of
dew falling on leaves, ordinarily in spring-time, but not seldom in
winter when there has been a stretch of fair weather and southerly
winds; others grow in decaying mud or dung; others in timber, green or
dry; some in the hair of animals; some in the flesh of animals; some
in excrements: and some from excrement after it has been voided, and
some from excrement yet within the living animal, like the
helminthes or intestinal worms. And of these intestinal worms there
are three species: one named the flat-worm, another the round worm,
and the third the ascarid. These intestinal worms do not in any case
propagate their kind. The flat-worm, however, in an exceptional way,
clings fast to the gut, and lays a thing like a melon-seed, by
observing which indication the physician concludes that his patient is
troubled with the worm.

The so-called psyche or butterfly is generated from caterpillars
which grow on green leaves, chiefly leaves of the raphanus, which some
call crambe or cabbage. At first it is less than a grain of millet; it
then grows into a small grub; and in three days it is a tiny
caterpillar. After this it grows on and on, and becomes quiescent
and changes its shape, and is now called a chrysalis. The outer
shell is hard, and the chrysalis moves if you touch it. It attaches
itself by cobweb-like filaments, and is unfurnished with mouth or
any other apparent organ. After a little while the outer covering
bursts asunder, and out flies the winged creature that we call the
psyche or butterfly. At first, when it is a caterpillar, it feeds
and ejects excrement; but when it turns into the chrysalis it
neither feeds nor ejects excrement.

The same remarks are applicable to all such insects as are
developed out of the grub, both such grubs as are derived from the
copulation of living animals and such as are generated without
copulation on the part of parents. For the grub of the bee, the
anthrena, and the wasp, whilst it is young, takes food and voids
excrement; but when it has passed from the grub shape to its defined
form and become what is termed a 'nympha', it ceases to take food
and to void excrement, and remains tightly wrapped up and motionless
until it has reached its full size, when it breaks the formation
with which the cell is closed, and issues forth. The insects named the
hypera and the penia are derived from similar caterpillars, which move
in an undulatory way, progressing with one part and then pulling up
the hinder parts by a bend of the body. The developed insect in each
case takes its peculiar colour from the parent caterpillar.

From one particular large grub, which has as it were horns, and in
other respects differs from grubs in general, there comes, by a
metamorphosis of the grub, first a caterpillar, then the cocoon,
then the necydalus; and the creature passes through all these
transformations within six months. A class of women unwind and reel
off the cocoons of these creatures, and afterwards weave a fabric with
the threads thus unwound; a Coan woman of the name of Pamphila,
daughter of Plateus, being credited with the first invention of the
fabric. After the same fashion the carabus or stag-beetle comes from
grubs that live in dry wood: at first the grub is motionless, but
after a while the shell bursts and the stag-beetle issues forth.

From the cabbage is engendered the cabbageworm, and from the
leek the prasocuris or leekbane; this creature is also winged. From
the flat animalcule that skims over the surface of rivers comes the
oestrus or gadfly; and this accounts for the fact that gadflies most
abound in the neighbourhood of waters on whose surface these
animalcules are observed. From a certain small, black and hairy
caterpillar comes first a wingless glow-worm; and this creature
again suffers a metamorphosis, and transforms into a winged insect
named the bostrychus (or hair-curl).

Gnats grow from ascarids; and ascarids are engendered in the
slime of wells, or in places where there is a deposit left by the
draining off of water. This slime decays, and first turns white,
then black, and finally blood-red; and at this stage there originate
in it, as it were, little tiny bits of red weed, which at first
wriggle about all clinging together, and finally break loose and
swim in the water, and are hereupon known as ascarids. After a few
days they stand straight up on the water motionless and hard, and by
and by the husk breaks off and the gnats are seen sitting upon it,
until the sun's heat or a puff of wind sets them in motion, when
they fly away.

With all grubs and all animals that break out from the grub
state, generation is due primarily to the heat of the sun or to wind.

Ascarids are more likely to be found, and grow with unusual
rapidity, in places where there is a deposit of a mixed and
heterogeneous kind, as in kitchens and in ploughed fields, for the
contents of such places are disposed to rapid putrefaction. In autumn,
also, owing to the drying up of moisture, they grow in unusual
numbers.

The tick is generated from couch-grass. The cockchafer comes
from a grub that is generated in the dung of the cow or the ass. The
cantharus or scarabeus rolls a piece of dung into a ball, lies
hidden within it during the winter, and gives birth therein to small
grubs, from which grubs come new canthari. Certain winged insects also
come from the grubs that are found in pulse, in the same fashion as in
the cases described.

Flies grow from grubs in the dung that farmers have gathered
up into heaps: for those who are engaged in this work assiduously
gather up the compost, and this they technically term 'working-up' the
manure. The grub is exceedingly minute to begin with; first even at
this stage-it assumes a reddish colour, and then from a quiescent
state it takes on the power of motion, as though born to it; it then
becomes a small motionless grub; it then moves again, and again
relapses into immobility; it then comes out a perfect fly, and moves
away under the influence of the sun's heat or of a puff of air. The
myops or horse-fly is engendered in timber. The orsodacna or budbane
is a transformed grub; and this grub is engendered in
cabbage-stalks. The cantharis comes from the caterpillars that are
found on fig-trees or pear-trees or fir-trees--for on all these
grubs are engendered-and also from caterpillars found on the dog-rose;
and the cantharis takes eagerly to ill-scented substances, from the
fact of its having been engendered in ill-scented woods. The conops
comes from a grub that is engendered in the slime of vinegar.

And, by the way, living animals are found in substances that are
usually supposed to be incapable of putrefaction; for instance,
worms are found in long-lying snow; and snow of this description
gets reddish in colour, and the grub that is engendered in it is
red, as might have been expected, and it is also hairy. The grubs
found in the snows of Media are large and white; and all such grubs
are little disposed to motion. In Cyprus, in places where copper-ore
is smelted, with heaps of the ore piled on day after day, an animal is
engendered in the fire, somewhat larger than a blue bottle fly,
furnished with wings, which can hop or crawl through the fire. And the
grubs and these latter animals perish when you keep the one away
from the fire and the other from the snow. Now the salamander is a
clear case in point, to show us that animals do actually exist that
fire cannot destroy; for this creature, so the story goes, not only
walks through the fire but puts it out in doing so.

On the river Hypanis in the Cimmerian Bosphorus, about the
time of the summer solstice, there are brought down towards the sea by
the stream what look like little sacks rather bigger than grapes,
out of which at their bursting issues a winged quadruped. The insect
lives and flies about until the evening, but as the sun goes down it
pines away, and dies at sunset having lived just one day, from which
circumstance it is called the ephemeron.

As a rule, insects that come from caterpillars and grubs are
held at first by filaments resembling the threads of a spider's web.

Such is the mode of generation of the insects above
enumerated. but if the latter impregnation takes placeduring the
change of the yellow

20

The wasps that are nicknamed 'the ichneumons' (or hunters), less
in size, by the way, than the ordinary wasp, kill spiders and carry
off the dead bodies to a wall or some such place with a hole in it;
this hole they smear over with mud and lay their grubs inside it,
and from the grubs come the hunter-wasps. Some of the coleoptera and
of the small and nameless insects make small holes or cells of mud
on a wall or on a grave-stone, and there deposit their grubs.

With insects, as a general rule, the time of generation from its
commencement to its completion comprises three or four weeks. With
grubs and grub-like creatures the time is usually three weeks, and
in the oviparous insects as a rule four. But, in the case of oviparous
insects, the egg-formation comes at the close of seven days from
copulation, and during the remaining three weeks the parent broods
over and hatches its young; i. e. where this is the result of
copulation, as in the case of the spider and its congeners. As a rule,
the transformations take place in intervals of three or four days,
corresponding to the lengths of interval at which the crises recur
in intermittent fevers.

So much for the generation of insects. Their death is due to the
shrivelling of their organs, just as the larger animals die of old
age.

Winged insects die in autumn from the shrinking of their wings.
The myops dies from dropsy in the eyes.

21

With regard to the generation of bees different hypotheses are
in vogue. Some affirm that bees neither copulate nor give birth to
young, but that they fetch their young. And some say that they fetch
their young from the flower of the callyntrum; others assert that they
bring them from the flower of the reed, others, from the flower of the
olive. And in respect to the olive theory, it is stated as a proof
that, when the olive harvest is most abundant, the swarms are most
numerous. Others declare that they fetch the brood of the drones
from such things as above mentioned, but that the working bees are
engendered by the rulers of the hive.

Now of these rulers there are two kinds: the better kind is
red in colour, the inferior kind is black and variegated; the ruler is
double the size of the working bee. These rulers have the abdomen or
part below the waist half as large again, and they are called by
some the 'mothers', from an idea that they bear or generate the
bees; and, as a proof of this theory of their motherhood, they declare
that the brood of the drones appears even when there is no ruler-bee
in the hive, but that the bees do not appear in his absence. Others,
again, assert that these insects copulate, and that the drones are
male and the bees female.

The ordinary bee is generated in the cells of the comb, but
the ruler-bees in cells down below attached to the comb, suspended
from it, apart from the rest, six or seven in number, and growing in a
way quite different from the mode of growth of the ordinary brood.

Bees are provided with a sting, but the drones are not so
provided. The rulers are provided with stings, but they never use
them; and this latter circumstance will account for the belief of some
people that they have no stings at all.

22

Of bees there are various species. The best kind is a little round
mottled insect; another is long, and resembles the anthrena; a third
is a black and flat-bellied, and is nick-named the 'robber'; a
fourth kind is the drone, the largest of all, but stingless and
inactive. And this proportionate size of the drone explains why some
bee-masters place a net-work in front of the hives; for the network is
put to keep the big drones out while it lets the little bees go in.

Of the king bees there are, as has been stated, two kinds. In
every hive there are more kings than one; and a hive goes to ruin if
there be too few kings, not because of anarchy thereby ensuing, but,
as we are told, because these creatures contribute in some way to
the generation of the common bees. A hive will go also to ruin if
there be too large a number of kings in it; for the members of the
hives are thereby subdivided into too many separate factions.

Whenever the spring-time is late a-coming, and when there is
drought and mildew, then the progeny of the hive is small in number.
But when the weather is dry they attend to the honey, and in rainy
weather their attention is concentrated on the brood; and this will
account for the coincidence of rich olive-harvests and abundant
swarms.

The bees first work at the honeycomb, and then put the pupae
in it: by the mouth, say those who hold the theory of their bringing
them from elsewhere. After putting in the pupae they put in the
honey for subsistence, and this they do in the summer and autumn; and,
by the way, the autumn honey is the better of the two.

The honeycomb is made from flowers, and the materials for the
wax they gather from the resinous gum of trees, while honey is
distilled from dew, and is deposited chiefly at the risings of the
constellations or when a rainbow is in the sky: and as a general
rule there is no honey before the rising of the Pleiads. (The bee,
then, makes the wax from flowers. The honey, however, it does not
make, but merely gathers what is deposited out of the atmosphere;
and as a proof of this statement we have the known fact that
occasionally bee-keepers find the hives filled with honey within the
space of two or three days. Furthermore, in autumn flowers are
found, but honey, if it be withdrawn, is not replaced; now, after
the withdrawal of the original honey, when no food or very little is
in the hives, there would be a fresh stock of honey, if the bees
made it from flowers. ) Honey, if allowed to ripen and mature, gathers
consistency; for at first it is like water and remains liquid for
several days. If it be drawn off during these days it has no
consistency; but it attains consistency in about twenty days. The
taste of thyme-honey is discernible at once, from its peculiar
sweetness and consistency.

The bee gathers from every flower that is furnished with a calyx
or cup, and from all other flowers that are sweet-tasted, without
doing injury to any fruit; and the juices of the flowers it takes up
with the organ that resembles a tongue and carries off to the hive.

Swarms are robbed of their honey on the appearance of the wild
fig. They produce the best larvae at the time the honey is a-making.
The bee carries wax and bees' bread round its legs, but vomits the
honey into the cell. After depositing its young, it broods over it
like a bird. The grub when it is small lies slantwise in the comb, but
by and by rises up straight by an effort of its own and takes food,
and holds on so tightly to the honeycomb as actually to cling to it.

The young of bees and of drones is white, and from the young
come the grubs; and the grubs grow into bees and drones. The egg of
the king bee is reddish in colour, and its substance is about as
consistent as thick honey; and from the first it is about as big as
the bee that is produced from it. From the young of the king bee there
is no intermediate stage, it is said, of the grub, but the bee comes
at once.

Whenever the bee lays an egg in the comb there is always a
drop of honey set against it. The larva of the bee gets feet and wings
as soon as the cell has been stopped up with wax, and when it
arrives at its completed form it breaks its membrane and flies away.
It ejects excrement in the grub state, but not afterwards; that is,
not until it has got out of the encasing membrane, as we have
already described. If you remove the heads from off the larvae
before the coming of the wings, the bees will eat them up; and if
you nip off the wings from a drone and let it go, the bees will
spontaneously bite off the wings from off all the remaining drones.

The bee lives for six years as a rule, as an exception for seven
years. If a swarm lasts for nine years, or ten, great credit is
considered due to its management.

In Pontus are found bees exceedingly white in colour, and
these bees produce their honey twice a month. (The bees in Themiscyra,
on the banks of the river Thermodon, build honeycombs in the ground
and in hives, and these honeycombs are furnished with very little wax
but with honey of great consistency; and the honeycomb, by the way,
is smooth and level. ) But this is not always the case with these bees,
but only in the winter season; for in Pontus the ivy is abundant,
and it flowers at this time of the year, and it is from the ivy-flower
that they derive their honey. A white and very consistent honey is
brought down from the upper country to Amisus, which is deposited by
bees on trees without the employment of honeycombs: and this kind of
honey is produced in other districts in Pontus.

There are bees also that construct triple honeycombs in the
ground; and these honeycombs supply honey but never contain grubs. But
the honeycombs in these places are not all of this sort, nor do all
the bees construct them.

23

Anthrenae and wasps construct combs for their young. When they
have no king, but are wandering about in search of one, the anthrene
constructs its comb on some high place, and the wasp inside a hole.
When the anthrene and the wasp have a king, they construct their combs
underground. Their combs are in all cases hexagonal like the comb of
the bee. They are composed, however, not of wax, but of a bark-like
filamented fibre, and the comb of the anthrene is much neater than the
comb of the wasp. Like the bee, they put their young just like a
drop of liquid on to the side of the cell, and the egg clings to the
wall of the cell. But the eggs are not deposited in the cells
simultaneously; on the contrary, in some cells are creatures big
enough to fly, in others are nymphae, and in others are mere grubs. As
in the case of bees, excrement is observed only in the cells where the
grubs are found. As long as the creatures are in the nymph condition
they are motionless, and the cell is cemented over. In the comb of the
anthrene there is found in the cell of the young a drop of honey in
front of it. The larvae of the anthrene and the wasp make their
appearance not in the spring but in the autumn; and their growth is
especially discernible in times of full moon. And, by the way, the
eggs and the grubs never rest at the bottom of the cells, but always
cling on to the side wall.

24

There is a kind of humble-bee that builds a cone-shaped nest of
clay against a stone or in some similar situation, besmearing the clay
with something like spittle. And this nest or hive is exceedingly
thick and hard; in point of fact, one can hardly break it open with
a spike. Here the insects lay their eggs, and white grubs are produced
wrapped in a black membrane. Apart from the membrane there is found
some wax in the honeycomb; and this a wax is much sallower in hue than
the wax in the honeycomb of the bee.

25

Ants copulate and engender grubs; and these grubs attach
themselves to nothing in particular, but grow on and on from small and
rounded shapes until they become elongated and defined in shape: and
they are engendered in spring-time.

26

The land-scorpion also lays a number of egg shaped grubs, and
broods over them. When the hatching is completed, the parent animal,
as happens with the parent spider, is ejected and put to death by
the young ones; for very often the young ones are about eleven in
number.

27

Spiders in all cases copulate in the way above mentioned, and
generate at first small grubs. And these grubs metamorphose in their
entirety, and not partially, into spiders; for, by the way, the
grubs are round-shaped at the outset. And the spider, when it lays its
eggs, broods over them, and in three days the eggs or grubs take
definite shape.

All spiders lay their eggs in a web; but some spiders lay in a
small and fine web, and others in a thick one; and some, as a rule,
lay in a round-shaped case or capsule, and some are only partially
enveloped in the web. The young grubs are not all developed at one and
the same time into young spiders; but the moment the development takes
place, the young spider makes a leap and begins to spin his web. The
juice of the grub, if you squeeze it, is the same as the juice found
in the spider when young; that is to say, it is thick and white.

The meadow spider lays its eggs into a web, one half of which is
attached to itself and the other half is free; and on this the
parent broods until the eggs are hatched. The phalangia lay their eggs
in a sort of strong basket which they have woven, and brood over it
until the eggs are hatched. The smooth spider is much less prolific
than the phalangium or hairy spider. These phalangia, when they grow
to full size, very often envelop the mother phalangium and eject and
kill her; and not seldom they kill the father-phalangium as well, if
they catch him: for, by the way, he has the habit of co-operating with
the mother in the hatching. The brood of a single phalangium is
sometimes three hundred in number. The spider attains its full
growth in about four weeks.

28

Grasshoppers (or locusts) copulate in the same way as other
insects; that is to say, with the lesser covering the larger, for
the male is smaller than the female. The females first insert the
hollow tube, which they have at their tails, in the ground, and then
lay their eggs: and the male, by the way, is not furnished with this
tube. The females lay their eggs all in a lump together, and in one
spot, so that the entire lump of eggs resembles a honeycomb. After
they have laid their eggs, the eggs assume the shape of oval grubs
that are enveloped by a sort of thin clay, like a membrane; in this
membrane-like formation they grow on to maturity. The larva is so soft
that it collapses at a touch. The larva is not placed on the surface
of the ground, but a little beneath the surface; and, when it
reaches maturity, it comes out of its clayey investiture in the
shape of a little black grasshopper; by and by, the skin integument
strips off, and it grows larger and larger.

The grasshopper lays its eggs at the close of summer, and dies
after laying them. The fact is that, at the time of laying the eggs,
grubs are engendered in the region of the mother grasshopper's neck;
and the male grasshoppers die about the same time. In spring-time they
come out of the ground; and, by the way, no grasshoppers are found
in mountainous land or in poor land, but only in flat and loamy
land, for the fact is they lay their eggs in cracks of the soil.
During the winter their eggs remain in the ground; and with the coming
of summer the last year's larva develops into the perfect grasshopper.

29

The attelabi or locusts lay their eggs and die in like manner
after laying them. Their eggs are subject to destruction by the autumn
rains, when the rains are unusually heavy; but in seasons of drought
the locusts are exceedingly numerous, from the absence of any
destructive cause, since their destruction seems then to be a matter
of accident and to depend on luck.

30

Of the cicada there are two kinds; one, small in size, the first
to come and the last to disappear; the other, large, the singing one
that comes last and first disappears. Both in the small and the
large species some are divided at the waist, to wit, the singing ones,
and some are undivided; and these latter have no song. The large and
singing cicada is by some designated the 'chirper', and the small
cicada the 'tettigonium' or cicadelle. And, by the way, such of the
tettigonia as are divided at the waist can sing just a little.

The cicada is not found where there are no trees; and this
accounts for the fact that in the district surrounding the city of
Cyrene it is not found at all in the plain country, but is found in
great numbers in the neighbourhood of the city, and especially where
olive-trees are growing: for an olive grove is not thickly shaded. And
the cicada is not found in cold places, and consequently is not
found in any grove that keeps out the sunlight.

The large and the small cicada copulate alike, belly to belly. The
male discharges sperm into the female, as is the case with insects
in general, and the female cicada has a cleft generative organ; and it
is the female into which the male discharges the sperm.

They lay their eggs in fallow lands, boring a hole with the
pointed organ they carry in the rear, as do the locusts likewise;
for the locust lays its eggs in untilled lands, and this fact may
account for their numbers in the territory adjacent to the city of
Cyrene. The cicadae also lay their eggs in the canes on which
husbandmen prop vines, perforating the canes; and also in the stalks
of the squill. This brood runs into the ground. And they are most
numerous in rainy weather. The grub, on attaining full size in the
ground, becomes a tettigometra (or nymph), and the creature is
sweetest to the taste at this stage before the husk is broken. When
the summer solstice comes, the creature issues from the husk at
night-time, and in a moment, as the husk breaks, the larva becomes the
perfect cicada. creature, also, at once turns black in colour and
harder and larger, and takes to singing. In both species, the larger
and the smaller, it is the male that sings, and the female that is
unvocal. At first, the males are the sweeter eating; but, after
copulation, the females, as they are full then of white eggs.

If you make a sudden noise as they are flying overhead they let
drop something like water. Country people, in regard to this, say that
they are voiding urine, ie. that they have an excrement, and that they
feed upon dew.

If you present your finger to a cicada and bend back the tip
of it and then extend it again, it will endure the presentation more
quietly than if you were to keep your finger outstretched
altogether; and it will set to climbing your finger: for the
creature is so weak-sighted that it will take to climbing your
finger as though that were a moving leaf.

31

Of insects that are not carnivorous but that live on the juices of
living flesh, such as lice and fleas and bugs, all, without exception,
generate what are called 'nits', and these nits generate nothing.

Of these insects the flea is generated out of the slightest amount
of putrefying matter; for wherever there is any dry excrement, a
flea is sure to be found. Bugs are generated from the moisture of
living animals, as it dries up outside their bodies. Lice are
generated out of the flesh of animals.

When lice are coming there is a kind of small eruption
visible, unaccompanied by any discharge of purulent matter; and, if
you prick an animal when in this condition at the spot of eruption,
the lice jump out. In some men the appearance of lice is a disease, in
cases where the body is surcharged with moisture; and, indeed, men
have been known to succumb to this louse-disease, as Alcman the poet
and the Syrian Pherecydes are said to have done. Moreover, in
certain diseases lice appear in great abundance.

There is also a species of louse called the 'wild louse', and
this is harder than the ordinary louse, and there is exceptional
difficulty in getting the skin rid of it. Boys' heads are apt to be
lousy, but men's in less degree; and women are more subject to lice
than men. But, whenever people are troubled with lousy heads, they are
less than ordinarily troubled with headache. And lice are generated in
other animals than man. For birds are infested with them; and
pheasants, unless they clean themselves in the dust, are actually
destroyed by them. All other winged animals that are furnished with
feathers are similarly infested, and all hair-coated creatures also,
with the single exception of the ass, which is infested neither with
lice nor with ticks.

Cattle suffer both from lice and from ticks. Sheep and goats breed
ticks, but do not breed lice. Pigs breed lice large and hard. In
dogs are found the flea peculiar to the animal, the Cynoroestes. In
all animals that are subject to lice, the latter originate from the
animals themselves. Moreover, in animals that bathe at all, lice are
more than usually abundant when they change the water in which they
bathe.

In the sea, lice are found on fishes, but they are generated not
out of the fish but out of slime; and they resemble multipedal
wood-lice, only that their tail is flat. Sea-lice are uniform in shape
and universal in locality, and are particularly numerous on the body
of the red mullet. And all these insects are multipedal and devoid
of blood.

The parasite that feeds on the tunny is found in the region of
the fins; it resembles a scorpion, and is about the size of a
spider. In the seas between Cyrene and Egypt there is a fish that
attends on the dolphin, which is called the 'dolphin's louse'. This
fish gets exceedingly fat from enjoying an abundance of food while the
dolphin is out in pursuit of its prey.

32

Other animalcules besides these are generated, as we have
already remarked, some in wool or in articles made of wool, as the ses
or clothes-moth. And these animalcules come in greater numbers if
the woollen substances are dusty; and they come in especially large
numbers if a spider be shut up in the cloth or wool, for the
creature drinks up any moisture that may be there, and dries up the
woollen substance. This grub is found also in men's clothes.

A creature is also found in wax long laid by, just as in wood,
and it is the smallest of animalcules and is white in colour, and is
designated the acari or mite.
In books also other animalcules are
found, some resembling the grubs found in garments, and some
resembling tailless scorpions, but very small. As a general rule we
may state that such animalcules are found in practically anything,
both in dry things that are becoming moist and in moist things that
are drying, provided they contain the conditions of life.

There is a grub entitled the 'faggot-bearer', as strange a
creature as is known. Its head projects outside its shell, mottled
in colour, and its feet are near the end or apex, as is the case
with grubs in general; but the rest of its body is cased in a tunic as
it were of spider's web, and there are little dry twigs about it, that
look as though they had stuck by accident to the creature as it went
walking about. But these twig-like formations are naturally
connected with the tunic, for just as the shell is with the body of
the snail so is the whole superstructure with our grub; and they do
not drop off, but can only be torn off, as though they were all of a
piece with him, and the removal of the tunic is as fatal to this
grub as the removal of the shell would be to the snail. In course of
time this grub becomes a chrysalis, as is the case with the
silkworm, and lives in a motionless condition. But as yet it is not
known into what winged condition it is transformed.

The fruit of the wild fig contains the psen, or fig-wasp. This
creature is a grub at first; but in due time the husk peels off and
the psen leaves the husk behind it and flies away, and enters into the
fruit of the fig-tree through its orifice, and causes the fruit not to
drop off; and with a view to this phenomenon, country folk are in
the habit of tying wild figs on to fig-trees, and of planting wild
fig-trees near domesticated ones.

33

In the case of animals that are quadrupeds and red-blooded and
oviparous, generation takes place in the spring, but copulation does
not take place in an uniform season. In some cases it takes place in
the spring, in others in summer time, and in others in the autumn,
according as the subsequent season may be favourable for the young.

The tortoise lays eggs with a hard shell and of two colours
within, like birds' eggs, and after laying them buries them in the
ground and treads the ground hard over them; it then broods over the
eggs on the surface of the ground, and hatches the eggs the next year.
The hemys, or fresh-water tortoise, leaves the water and lays its
eggs. It digs a hole of a casklike shape, and deposits therein the
eggs; after rather less than thirty days it digs the eggs up again and
hatches them with great rapidity, and leads its young at once off to
the water. The sea-turtle lays on the ground eggs just like the eggs
of domesticated birds, buries the eggs in the ground, and broods
over them in the night-time. It lays a very great number of eggs,
amounting at times to one hundred.

Lizards and crocodiles, terrestrial and fluvial, lay eggs on land.
The eggs of lizards hatch spontaneously on land, for the lizard does
not live on into the next year; in fact, the life of the animal is
said not to exceed six months. The river-crocodile lays a number of
eggs, sixty at the most, white in colour, and broods over them for
sixty days: for, by the way, the creature is very long-lived. And
the disproportion is more marked in this animal than in any other
between the smallness of the original egg and the huge size of the
full-grown animal. For the egg is not larger than that of the goose,
and the young crocodile is small, answering to the egg in size, but
the full-grown animal attains the length of twenty-six feet; in
fact, it is actually stated that the animal goes on growing to the end
of its days.

34

With regard to serpents or snakes, the viper is externally
viviparous, having been previously oviparous internally. The egg, as
with the egg of fishes, is uniform in colour and soft-skinned. The
young serpent grows on the surface of the egg, and, like the young
of fishes, has no shell-like envelopment. The young of the viper is
born inside a membrane that bursts from off the young creature in
three days; and at times the young viper eats its way out from the
inside of the egg. The mother viper brings forth all its young in
one day, twenty in number, and one at a time. The other serpents are
externally oviparous, and their eggs are strung on to one another like
a lady's necklace; after the dam has laid her eggs in the ground she
broods over them, and hatches the eggs in the following year.

Book VI

1

So much for the generative processes in snakes and insects, and
also in oviparous quadrupeds. Birds without exception lay eggs, but
the pairing season and the times of parturition are not alike for all.
Some birds couple and lay at almost any time in the year, as for
instance the barn-door hen and the pigeon: the former of these
coupling and laying during the entire year, with the exception of
the month before and the month after the winter solstice. Some hens,
even in the high breeds, lay a large quantity of eggs before brooding,
amounting to as many as sixty; and, by the way, the higher breeds
are less prolific than the inferior ones. The Adrian hens are
small-sized, but they lay every day; they are cross-tempered, and
often kill their chickens; they are of all colours. Some
domesticated hens lay twice a day; indeed, instances have been known
where hens, after exhibiting extreme fecundity, have died suddenly.
Hens, then, lay eggs, as has been stated, at all times
indiscriminately; the pigeon, the ring-dove, the turtle-dove, and
the stock-dove lay twice a year, and the pigeon actually lays ten
times a year. The great majority of birds lay during the
spring-time. Some birds are prolific, and prolific in either of two
ways-either by laying often, as the pigeon, or by laying many eggs
at a sitting, as the barn-door hen. All birds of prey, or birds with
crooked talons, are unprolific, except the kestrel: this bird is the
most prolific of birds of prey; as many as four eggs have been
observed in the nest, and occasionally it lays even more.

Birds in general lay their eggs in nests, but such as are
disqualified for flight, as the partridge and the quail, do not lay
them in nests but on the ground, and cover them over with loose
material. The same is the case with the lark and the tetrix. These
birds hatch in sheltered places; but the bird called merops in
Boeotia, alone of all birds, burrows into holes in the ground and
hatches there.

Thrushes, like swallows, build nests of clay, on high trees, and
build them in rows all close together, so that from their continuity
the structure resembles a necklace of nests. Of all birds that hatch
for themselves the hoopoe is the only one that builds no nest
whatever; it gets into the hollow of the trunk of a tree, and lays its
eggs there without making any sort of nest. The circus builds either
under a dwelling-roof or on cliffs. The tetrix, called ourax in
Athens, builds neither on the ground nor on trees, but on low-lying
shrubs.

2

The egg in the case of all birds alike is hard-shelled, if it be
the produce of copulation and be laid by a healthy hen-for some hens
lay soft eggs. The interior of the egg is of two colours, and the
white part is outside and the yellow part within.

The eggs of birds that frequent rivers and marshes differ from
those of birds that live on dry land; that is to say, the eggs of
waterbirds have comparatively more of the yellow or yolk and less of
the white. Eggs vary in colour according to their kind. Some eggs
are white, as those of the pigeon and of the partridge; others are
yellowish, as the eggs of marsh birds; in some cases the eggs are
mottled, as the eggs of the guinea-fowl and the pheasant; while the
eggs of the kestrel are red, like vermilion.

Eggs are not symmetrically shaped at both ends: in other
words, one end is comparatively sharp, and the other end is
comparatively blunt; and it is the latter end that protrudes first
at the time of laying. Long and pointed eggs are female; those that
are round, or more rounded at the narrow end, are male. Eggs are
hatched by the incubation of the mother-bird. In some cases, as in
Egypt, they are hatched spontaneously in the ground, by being buried
in dung heaps. A story is told of a toper in Syracuse, how he used
to put eggs into the ground under his rush-mat and to keep on drinking
until he hatched them. Instances have occurred of eggs being deposited
in warm vessels and getting hatched spontaneously.

The sperm of birds, as of animals in general, is white. After
the female has submitted to the male, she draws up the sperm to
underneath her midriff. At first it is little in size and white in
colour; by and by it is red, the colour of blood; as it grows, it
becomes pale and yellow all over. When at length it is getting ripe
for hatching, it is subject to differentiation of substance, and the
yolk gathers together within and the white settles round it on the
outside. When the full time is come, the egg detaches itself and
protrudes, changing from soft to hard with such temporal exactitude
that, whereas it is not hard during the process of protrusion, it
hardens immediately after the process is completed: that is if there
be no concomitant pathological circumstances. Cases have occurred
where substances resembling the egg at a critical point of its
growth-that is, when it is yellow all over, as the yolk is
subsequently-have been found in the cock when cut open, underneath his
midriff, just where the hen has her eggs; and these are entirely
yellow in appearance and of the same size as ordinary eggs. Such
phenomena are regarded as unnatural and portentous.

Such as affirm that wind-eggs are the residua of eggs previously
begotten from copulation are mistaken in this assertion, for we have
cases well authenticated where chickens of the common hen and goose
have laid wind-eggs without ever having been subjected to
copulation. Wind-eggs are smaller, less palatable, and more liquid
than true eggs, and are produced in greater numbers. When they are put
under the mother bird, the liquid contents never coagulate, but both
the yellow and the white remain as they were. Wind-eggs are laid by
a number of birds: as for instance by the common hen, the hen
partridge, the hen pigeon, the peahen, the goose, and the vulpanser.
Eggs are hatched under brooding hens more rapidly in summer than in
winter; that is to say, hens hatch in eighteen days in summer, but
occasionally in winter take as many as twenty-five. And by the way for
brooding purposes some birds make better mothers than others. If it
thunders while a hen-bird is brooding, the eggs get addled.
Wind-eggs that are called by some cynosura and uria are produced
chiefly in summer. Wind-eggs are called by some zephyr-eggs, because
at spring-time hen-birds are observed to inhale the breezes; they do
the same if they be stroked in a peculiar way by hand. Wind-eggs can
turn into fertile eggs, and eggs due to previous copulation can change
breed, if before the change of the yellow to the white the hen that
contains wind-eggs, or eggs begotten of copulation be trodden by
another cock-bird. Under these circumstances the wind-eggs turn into
fertile eggs, and the previously impregnated eggs follow the breed
of the impregnator; but if the latter impregnation takes place
during the change of the yellow to the white, then no change in the
egg takes place: the wind-egg does not become a true egg, and the true
egg does not take on the breed of the latter impregnator. If when
the egg-substance is small copulation be intermitted, the previously
existing egg-substance exhibits no increase; but if the hen be again
submitted to the male the increase in size proceeds with rapidity.

The yolk and the white are diverse not only in colour but also
in properties. Thus, the yolk congeals under the influence of cold,
whereas the white instead of congealing is inclined rather to liquefy.
Again, the white stiffens under the influence of fire, whereas the
yolk does not stiffen; but, unless it be burnt through and through, it
remains soft, and in point of fact is inclined to set or to harden
more from the boiling than from the roasting of the egg. The yolk
and the white are separated by a membrane from one another. The
so-called 'hail-stones', or treadles, that are found at the
extremity of the yellow in no way contribute towards generation, as
some erroneously suppose: they are two in number, one below and the
other above. If you take out of the shells a number of yolks and a
number of whites and pour them into a sauce pan and boil them slowly
over a low fire, the yolks will gather into the centre and the
whites will set all around them.

Young hens are the first to lay, and they do so at the beginning
of spring and lay more eggs than the older hens, but the eggs of the
younger hens are comparatively small. As a general rule, if hens get
no brooding they pine and sicken. After copulation hens shiver and
shake themselves, and often kick rubbish about all round them-and
this, by the way, they do sometimes after laying-whereas pigeons trail
their rumps on the ground, and geese dive under the water.
Conception of the true egg and conformation of the wind-egg take place
rapidly with most birds; as for instance with the hen-partridge when
in heat. The fact is that, when she stands to windward and within
scent of the male, she conceives, and becomes useless for decoy
purposes: for, by the way, the partridge appears to have a very
acute sense of smell.

The generation of the egg after copulation and the generation of
the chick from the subsequent hatching of the egg are not brought
about within equal periods for all birds, but differ as to time
according to the size of the parent-birds. The egg of the common hen
after copulation sets and matures in ten days a general rule; the
egg of the pigeon in a somewhat lesser period. Pigeons have the
faculty of holding back the egg at the very moment of parturition;
if a hen pigeon be put about by any one, for instance if it be
disturbed on its nest, or have a feather plucked out, or sustain any
other annoyance or disturbance, then even though she had made up her
mind to lay she can keep the egg back in abeyance. A singular
phenomenon is observed in pigeons with regard to pairing: that is,
they kiss one another just when the male is on the point of mounting
the female, and without this preliminary the male would decline to
perform his function. With the older males the preliminary kiss is
only given to begin with, and subsequently sequently he mounts without
previously kissing; with younger males the preliminary is never
omitted. Another singularity in these birds is that the hens tread one
another when a cock is not forthcoming, after kissing one another just
as takes place in the normal pairing. Though they do not impregnate
one another they lay more eggs under these than under ordinary
circumstances; no chicks, however, result therefrom, but all such eggs
are wind-eggs.

3

Generation from the egg proceeds in an identical manner with all
birds, but the full periods from conception to birth differ, as has
been said. With the common hen after three days and three nights there
is the first indication of the embryo; with larger birds the
interval being longer, with smaller birds shorter. Meanwhile the
yolk comes into being, rising towards the sharp end, where the
primal element of the egg is situated, and where the egg gets hatched;
and the heart appears, like a speck of blood, in the white of the egg.
This point beats and moves as though endowed with life, and from it
two vein-ducts with blood in them trend in a convoluted course (as the
egg substance goes on growing, towards each of the two circumjacent
integuments); and a membrane carrying bloody fibres now envelops the
yolk, leading off from the vein-ducts. A little afterwards the body is
differentiated, at first very small and white. The head is clearly
distinguished, and in it the eyes, swollen out to a great extent. This
condition of the eyes lat on for a good while, as it is only by
degrees that they diminish in size and collapse. At the outset the
under portion of the body appears insignificant in comparison with the
upper portion. Of the two ducts that lead from the heart, the one
proceeds towards the circumjacent integument, and the other, like a
navel-string, towards the yolk. The life-element of the chick is in
the white of the egg, and the nutriment comes through the navel-string
out of the yolk.

When the egg is now ten days old the chick and all its parts are
distinctly visible. The head is still larger than the rest of its
body, and the eyes larger than the head, but still devoid of vision.
The eyes, if removed about this time, are found to be larger than
beans, and black; if the cuticle be peeled off them there is a white
and cold liquid inside, quite glittering in the sunlight, but there is
no hard substance whatsoever. Such is the condition of the head and
eyes. At this time also the larger internal organs are visible, as
also the stomach and the arrangement of the viscera; and veins that
seem to proceed from the heart are now close to the navel. From the
navel there stretch a pair of veins; one towards the membrane that
envelops the yolk (and, by the way, the yolk is now liquid, or more so
than is normal), and the other towards that membrane which envelops
collectively the membrane wherein the chick lies, the membrane of
the yolk, and the intervening liquid. (For, as the chick grows, little
by little one part of the yolk goes upward, and another part downward,
and the white liquid is between them; and the white of the egg is
underneath the lower part of the yolk, as it was at the outset. ) On
the tenth day the white is at the extreme outer surface, reduced in
amount, glutinous, firm in substance, and sallow in colour.

The disposition of the several constituent parts is as
follows. First and outermost comes the membrane of the egg, not that
of the shell, but underneath it. Inside this membrane is a white
liquid; then comes the chick, and a membrane round about it,
separating it off so as to keep the chick free from the liquid; next
after the chick comes the yolk, into which one of the two veins was
described as leading, the other one leading into the enveloping
white substance. (A membrane with a liquid resembling serum envelops
the entire structure. Then comes another membrane right round the
embryo, as has been described, separating it off against the liquid.
Underneath this comes the yolk, enveloped in another membrane (into
which yolk proceeds the navel-string that leads from the heart and the
big vein), so as to keep the embryo free of both liquids. )

About the twentieth day, if you open the egg and touch the
chick, it moves inside and chirps; and it is already coming to be
covered with down, when, after the twentieth day is ast, the chick
begins to break the shell. The head is situated over the right leg
close to the flank, and the wing is placed over the head; and about
this time is plain to be seen the membrane resembling an after-birth
that comes next after the outermost membrane of the shell, into
which membrane the one of the navel-strings was described as leading
(and, by the way, the chick in its entirety is now within it), and
so also is the other membrane resembling an after-birth, namely that
surrounding the yolk, into which the second navel-string was described
as leading; and both of them were described as being connected with
the heart and the big vein. At this conjuncture the navel-string
that leads to the outer afterbirth collapses and becomes detached from
the chick, and the membrane that leads into the yolk is fastened on to
the thin gut of the creature, and by this time a considerable amount
of the yolk is inside the chick and a yellow sediment is in its
stomach. About this time it discharges residuum in the direction of
the outer after-birth, and has residuum inside its stomach; and the
outer residuum is white (and there comes a white substance inside). By
and by the yolk, diminishing gradually in size, at length becomes
entirely used up and comprehended within the chick (so that, ten
days after hatching, if you cut open the chick, a small remnant of the
yolk is still left in connexion with the gut), but it is detached from
the navel, and there is nothing in the interval between, but it has
been used up entirely. During the period above referred to the chick
sleeps, wakes up, makes a move and looks up and Chirps; and the
heart and the navel together palpitate as though the creature were
respiring. So much as to generation from the egg in the case of birds.

Birds lay some eggs that are unfruitful, even eggs that are
the result of copulation, and no life comes from such eggs by
incubation; and this phenomenon is observed especially with pigeons.

Twin eggs have two yolks. In some twin eggs a thin partition
of white intervenes to prevent the yolks mixing with each other, but
some twin eggs are unprovided with such partition, and the yokes run
into one another. There are some hens that lay nothing but twin
eggs, and in their case the phenomenon regarding the yolks has been
observed. For instance, a hen has been known to lay eighteen eggs, and
to hatch twins out of them all, except those that were wind-eggs;
the rest were fertile (though, by the way, one of the twins is
always bigger than the other), but the eighteenth was abnormal or
monstrous.

4

Birds of the pigeon kind, such as the ringdove and the
turtle-dove, lay two eggs at a time; that is to say, they do so as a
general rule, and they never lay more than three. The pigeon, as has
been said, lays at all seasons; the ring-dove and the turtle-dove
lay in the springtime, and they never lay more than twice in the
same season. The hen-bird lays the second pair of eggs when the
first pair happens to have been destroyed, for many of the hen-pigeons
destroy the first brood. The hen-pigeon, as has been said,
occasionally lays three eggs, but it never rears more than two chicks,
and sometimes rears only one; and the odd one is always a wind-egg.

Very few birds propagate within their first year. All birds,
after once they have begun laying, keep on having eggs, though in
the case of some birds it is difficult to detect the fact from the
minute size of the creature.

The pigeon, as a rule, lays a male and a female egg, and generally
lays the male egg first; after laying it allows a day's interval to
ensue and then lays the second egg. The male takes its turn of sitting
during the daytime; the female sits during the night. The first-laid
egg is hatched and brought to birth within twenty days; and the mother
bird pecks a hole in the egg the day before she hatches it out. The
two parent birds brood for some time over the chicks in the way in
which they brooded previously over the eggs. In all connected with the
rearing of the young the female parent is more cross-tempered than the
male, as is the case with most animals after parturition. The hens lay
as many as ten times in the year; occasional instances have been known
of their laying eleven times, and in Egypt they actually lay twelve
times. The pigeon, male and female, couples within the year; in
fact, it couples when only six months old. Some assert that
ringdoves and turtle-doves pair and procreate when only three months
old, and instance their superabundant numbers by way of proof of the
assertion. The hen-pigeon carries her eggs fourteen days; for as
many more days the parent birds hatch the eggs; by the end of
another fourteen days the chicks are so far capable of flight as to be
overtaken with difficulty. (The ring-dove, according to all
accounts, lives up to forty years. The partridge lives over
sixteen. ) (After one brood the pigeon is ready for another within
thirty days. )

5

The vulture builds its nest on inaccessible cliffs; for which
reason its nest and young are rarely seen. And therefore Herodorus,
father of Bryson the Sophist, declares that vultures belong to some
foreign country unknown to us, stating as a proof of the assertion
that no one has ever seen a vulture's nest, and also that vultures
in great numbers make a sudden appearance in the rear of armies.
However, difficult as it is to get a sight of it, a vulture's nest has
been seen. The vulture lays two eggs.

(Carnivorous birds in general are observed to lay but once a
year. The swallow is the only carnivorous bird that builds a nest
twice. If you prick out the eyes of swallow chicks while they are
yet young, the birds will get well again and will see by and by. )

6

The eagle lays three eggs and hatches two of them, as it is said
in the verses ascribed to Musaeus:

That lays three, hatches two, and cares for one.

This is the case in most instances, though occasionally a brood of
three has been observed. As the young ones grow, the mother becomes
wearied with feeding them and extrudes one of the pair from the
nest. At the same time the bird is said to abstain from food, to avoid
harrying the young of wild animals. That is to say, its wings blanch,
and for some days its talons get turned awry. It is in consequence
about this time cross-tempered to its own young. The phene is said
to rear the young one that has been expelled the nest. The eagle
broods for about thirty days.

The hatching period is about the same for the larger birds, such
as the goose and the great bustard; for the middle-sized birds it
extends over about twenty days, as in the case of the kite and the
hawk. The kite in general lays two eggs, but occasionally rears
three young ones. The so-called aegolius at times rears four. It is
not true that, as some aver, the raven lays only two eggs; it lays a
larger number. It broods for about twenty days and then extrudes its
young. Other birds perform the same operation; at all events mother
birds that lay several eggs often extrude one of their young.

Birds of the eagle species are not alike in the treatment of their
young. The white-tailed eagle is cross, the black eagle is
affectionate in the feeding of the young; though, by the way, all
birds of prey, when their brood is rather forward in being able to
fly, beat and extrude them from the nest. The majority of birds
other than birds of prey, as has been said, also act in this manner,
and after feeding their young take no further care of them; but the
crow is an exception. This bird for a considerable time takes charge
of her young; for, even when her young can fly, she flies alongside of
them and supplies them with food.

7

The cuckoo is said by some to be a hawk transformed, because at
the time of the cuckoo's coming, the hawk, which it resembles, is
never seen; and indeed it is only for a few days that you will see
hawks about when the cuckoo's note sounds early in the season. The
cuckoo appears only for a short time in summer, and in winter
disappears. The hawk has crooked talons, which the cuckoo has not;
neither with regard to the head does the cuckoo resemble the hawk.
In point of fact, both as regards the head and the claws it more
resembles the pigeon. However, in colour and in colour alone it does
resemble the hawk, only that the markings of the hawk are striped, and
of the cuckoo mottled. And, by the way, in size and flight it
resembles the smallest of the hawk tribe, which bird disappears as a
rule about the time of the appearance of the cuckoo, though the two
have been seen simultaneously. The cuckoo has been seen to be preyed
on by the hawk; and this never happens between birds of the same
species. They say no one has ever seen the young of the cuckoo. The
bird eggs, but does not build a nest. Sometimes it lays its eggs in
the nest of a smaller bird after first devouring the eggs of this
bird; it lays by preference in the nest of the ringdove, after first
devouring the eggs of the pigeon. (It occasionally lays two, but
usually one. ) It lays also in the nest of the hypolais, and the
hypolais hatches and rears the brood. It is about this time that the
bird becomes fat and palatable. (The young of hawks also get palatable
and fat. One species builds a nest in the wilderness and on sheer
and inaccessible cliffs. )

8

With most birds, as has been said of the pigeon, the hatching is
carried on by the male and the female in turns: with some birds,
however, the male only sits long enough to allow the female to provide
herself with food. In the goose tribe the female alone incubates,
and after once sitting on the eggs she continues brooding until they
are hatched.

The nests of all marsh-birds are built in districts fenny and well
supplied with grass; consequently, the mother-bird while sitting quiet
on her eggs can provide herself with food without having to submit
to absolute fasting.

With the crow also the female alone broods, and broods
throughout the whole period; the male bird supports the female,
bringing her food and feeding her. The female of the ring-dove
begins to brood in the afternoon and broods through the entire night
until breakfast-time of the following day; the male broods during
the rest of the time. Partridges build a nest in two compartments; the
male broods on the one and the female on the other. After hatching,
each of the parent birds rears its brood. But the male, when he
first takes his young out of the nest, treads them.

9

Peafowl live for about twenty-five years, breed about the third
year, and at the same time take on their spangled plumage. They
hatch their eggs within thirty days or rather more. The peahen lays
but once a year, and lays twelve eggs, or may be a slightly lesser
number: she does not lay all the eggs there and then one after the
other, but at intervals of two or three days. Such as lay for the
first time lay about eight eggs. The peahen lays wind-eggs. They
pair in the spring; and laying begins immediately after pairing. The
bird moults when the earliest trees are shedding their leaves, and
recovers its plumage when the same trees are recovering their foliage.