deep, and that of the mare louder and shriller than heretofore; and this change goes on until they reach the age of about twenty years; and after this time the neighing in both sexes becomes weaker and weaker.
As a rule, then, as was stated, the voice of the male differs from the voice of the female, in animals where the voice admits of a continuous and prolonged sound, in the fact that the note in the male voice is more deep and bass; not, however, in all animals, for the contrary holds good in the case of some, as for instance in kine: for here the cow has a deeper note than the bull, and the calves a deeper note than the cattle. And we can thus understand the change of voice in animals that undergo geld-ing; for male animals that undergo this process assume the characters of the female.
The following are the ages at which various animals become capacit-ated for sexual commerce. The ewe and the she-goat are sexually mature when one year old, and this statement is made more confidently in respect to the she-goat than to the ewe; the ram and the he-goat are sexually mature at the same age. The progeny of very young individuals among these animals differs from that of other males: for the males improve in the course of the second year, when they become fully mature.
The boar and the sow are capable of intercourse when eight months old, and the female brings forth when one year old, the difference corresponding to her period of gestation. The boar is capable of generation when eight months old, but, with a sire under a year in age, the litter is apt to be a poor one. The ages, however, are not invariable; now and then the boar and the sow are capable of intercourse when four months old, and are capable of producing a litter which can be reared when six months old; but at times the boar begins to be capable of intercourse when ten months. He continues sexually mature until he is three years old. The dog and the bitch are, as a rule, sexually capable and sexually receptive when a year old, and sometimes when eight months old; but the priority in date is more common with the dog than with the bitch.
The period of gestation with the bitch is sixty days, or sixty-one, or sixty-two, or sixty-three at the utmost; the period is never under sixty days, or, if it is, the litter comes to no good. The bitch, after delivering a litter, submits to the male in six months, but not before. The horse and the mare are, at the earliest, sexually capable and sexually mature when two years old; the issue, however, of parents of this age is small and poor. As a general rule these animals are sexually capable when three years old, and they grow better for breeding purposes until they reach twenty years. The stallion is sexually capable up to the age of thirty-three years, 1122
and the mare up to forty, so that, in point of fact, the animals are sexually capable all their lives long; for the stallion, as a rule, lives for about thirty-five years, and the mare for a little over forty; although, by the way, a horse has known to live to the age of seventy-five. The ass and the she-ass are sexually capable when thirty months old; but, as a rule, they are not generatively mature until they are three years old, or three years and a half. An instance has been known of a she-ass bearing and bringing forth a foal when only a year old. A cow has been known to calve when only a year old, and the calf grew as big as might be expected, but no more. So much for the dates in time at which these animals attain to generative capacity.
In the human species, the male is generative, at the longest, up to seventy years, and the female up to fifty; but such extended periods are rare.
As a rule, the male is generative up to the age of sixty-five, and to the age of forty-five the female is capable of conception.
The ewe bears up to eight years, and, if she be carefully tended, up to eleven years; in fact, the ram and the ewe are sexually capable pretty well all their lives long. He-goats, if they be fat, are more or less unserviceable for breeding; and this, by the way, is the reason why country folk say of a vine when it stops bearing that it is ‘running the goat’.
However, if an over-fat he-goat be thinned down, he becomes sexually capable and generative.
Rams single out the oldest ewes for copulation, and show no regard for the young ones. And, as has been stated, the issue of the younger ewes is poorer than that of the older ones.
The boar is good for breeding purposes until he is three years of age; but after that age his issue deteriorates, for after that age his vigour is on the decline. The boar is most capable after a good feed, and with the first sow it mounts; if poorly fed or put to many females, the copulation is ab-breviated, and the litter is comparatively poor. The first litter of the sow is the fewest in number; at the second litter she is at her prime. The animal, as it grows old, continues to breed, but the sexual desire abates.
When they reach fifteen years, they become unproductive, and are getting old. If a sow be highly fed, it is all the more eager for sexual commerce, whether old or young; but, if it be over-fattened in pregnancy, it gives the less milk after parturition. With regard to the age of the parents, the litter is the best when they are in their prime; but with regard to the seasons of the year, the litter is the best that comes at the beginning of winter; and the summer litter the poorest, consisting as it usually does of animals small and thin and flaccid. The boar, if it be well fed, is 1123
sexually capable at all hours, night and day; but otherwise is peculiarly salacious early in the morning. As it grows old the sexual passion dies away, as we have already remarked. Very often a boar, when more or less impotent from age or debility, finding itself unable to accomplish the sexual commerce with due speed, and growing fatigued with the standing posture, will roll the sow over on the ground, and the pair will conclude the operation side by side of one another. The sow is sure of conception if it drops its lugs in rutting time; if the ears do not thus drop, it may have to rut a second time before impregnation takes place.
Bitches do not submit to the male throughout their lives, but only until they reach a certain maturity of years. As a general rule, they are sexually receptive and conceptive until they are twelve years old; although, by the way, cases have been known where dogs and bitches have been respectively procreative and conceptive to the ages of eighteen and even of twenty years. But, as a rule, age diminishes the capability of generation and of conception with these animals as with all others.
The female of the camel is opisthuretic, and submits to the male in the way above described; and the season for copulation in Arabia is about the month of October. Its period of gestation is twelve months; and it is never delivered of more than one foal at a time. The female becomes sexually receptive and the male sexually capable at the age of three years. After parturition, an interval of a year elapses before the female is again receptive to the male.
The female elephant becomes sexually receptive when ten years old at the youngest, and when fifteen at the oldest; and the male is sexually capable when five years old, or six. The season for intercourse is spring.
The male allows an interval of three years to elapse after commerce with a female: and, after it has once impregnated a female, it has no intercourse with her again. The period of gestation with the female is two years; and only one young animal is produced at a time, in other words it is uniparous. And the embryo is the size of a calf two or three months old.
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So much for the copulations of such animals as copulate.
We now proceed to treat of generation both with respect to copulating and non-copulating animals, and we shall commence with discussing the subject of generation in the case of the testaceans.
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The testacean is almost the only genus that throughout all its species is non-copulative.
The porphyrae, or purple murices, gather together to some one place in the spring-time, and deposit the so-called ‘honeycomb’. This substance resembles the comb, only that it is not so neat and delicate; and looks as though a number of husks of white chick-peas were all stuck together. But none of these structures has any open passage, and the porphyra does not grow out of them, but these and all other testaceans grow out of mud and decaying matter. The substance, is, in fact, an excretion of the porphyra and the ceryx; for it is deposited by the ceryx as well.
Such, then, of the testaceans as deposit the honeycomb are generated spontaneously like all other testaceans, but they certainly come in greater abundance in places where their congeners have been living previously.
At the commencement of the process of depositing the honeycomb, they throw off a slippery mucus, and of this the husklike formations are composed. These formations, then, all melt and deposit their contents on the ground, and at this spot there are found on the ground a number of minute porphyrae, and porphyrae are caught at times with these animal-culae upon them, some of which are too small to be differentiated in form. If the porphyrae are caught before producing this honey-comb, they sometimes go through the process in fishing-creels, not here and there in the baskets, but gathering to some one spot all together, just as they do in the sea; and owing to the narrowness of their new quarters they cluster together like a bunch of grapes.
There are many species of the purple murex; and some are large, as those found off Sigeum and Lectum; others are small, as those found in the Euripus, and on the coast of Caria. And those that are found in bays are large and rough; in most of them the peculiar bloom from which their name is derived is dark to blackness, in others it is reddish and small in size; some of the large ones weigh upwards of a mina apiece.
But the specimens that are found along the coast and on the rocks are small-sized, and the bloom in their case is of a reddish hue. Further, as a general rule, in northern waters the bloom is blackish, and in southern waters of a reddish hue. The murex is caught in the spring-time when engaged in the construction of the honeycomb; but it is not caught at any time about the rising of the dog-star, for at that period it does not feed, but conceals itself and burrows. The bloom of the animal is situated between the mecon (or quasi-liver) and the neck, and the co-attachment of these is an intimate one. In colour it looks like a white membrane, and this is what people extract; and if it be removed and squeezed it stains 1125
your hand with the colour of the bloom. There is a kind of vein that runs through it, and this quasi-vein would appear to be in itself the bloom.
And the qualities, by the way, of this organ are astringent. It is after the murex has constructed the honeycomb that the bloom is at its worst.
Small specimens they break in pieces, shells and all, for it is no easy matter to extract the organ; but in dealing with the larger ones they first strip off the shell and then abstract the bloom. For this purpose the neck and mecon are separated, for the bloom lies in between them, above the so-called stomach; hence the necessity of separating them in abstracting the bloom. Fishermen are anxious always to break the animal in pieces while it is yet alive, for, if it die before the process is completed, it vomits out the bloom; and for this reason the fishermen keep the animals in creels, until they have collected a sufficient number and can attend to them at their leisure. Fishermen in past times used not to lower creels or attach them to the bait, so that very often the animal got dropped off in the pulling up; at present, however, they always attach a basket, so that if the animal fall off it is not lost. The animal is more inclined to slip off the bait if it be full inside; if it be empty it is difficult to shake it off. Such are the phenomena connected with the porphyra or murex.
The same phenomena are manifested by the ceryx or trumpet-shell; and the seasons are the same in which the phenomena are observable.
Both animals, also, the murex and the ceryx, have their opercula similarly situated-and, in fact, all the stromboids, and this is congenital with them all; and they feed by protruding the so-called tongue underneath the operculum. The tongue of the murex is bigger than one’s finger, and by means of it, it feeds, and perforates conchylia and the shells of its own kind. Both the murex and the ceryx are long lived. The murex lives for about six years; and the yearly increase is indicated by a distinct interval in the spiral convolution of the shell.
The mussel also constructs a honeycomb.
With regard to the limnostreae, or lagoon oysters, wherever you have slimy mud there you are sure to find them beginning to grow. Cockles and clams and razor-fishes and scallops row spontaneously in sandy places. The pinna grows straight up from its tuft of anchoring fibres in sandy and slimy places; these creatures have inside them a parasite nicknamed the pinna-guard, in some cases a small carid and in other cases a little crab; if the pinna be deprived of this pinna-guard it soon dies.
As a general rule, then, all testaceans grow by spontaneous generation in mud, differing from one another according to the differences of the material; oysters growing in slime, and cockles and the other testaceans 1126
above mentioned on sandy bottoms; and in the hollows of the rocks the ascidian and the barnacle, and common sorts, such as the limpet and the nerites. All these animals grow with great rapidity, especially the murex and the scallop; for the murex and the scallop attain their full growth in a year. In some of the testaceans white crabs are found, very diminutive in size; they are most numerous in the trough shaped mussel. In the pinna also is found the so-called pinna-guard. They are found also in the scallop and in the oyster; these parasites never appear to grow in size. Fishermen declare that the parasite is congenital with the larger animal.
(Scallops burrow for a time in the sand, like the murex.) (Shell-fish, then, grow in the way above mentioned; and some of them grow in shallow water, some on the sea-shore, some in rocky places, some on hard and stony ground, and some in sandy places.) Some shift about from place to place, others remain permanent on one spot. Of those that keep to one spot the pinnae are rooted to the ground; the razor-fish and the clam keep to the same locality, but are not so rooted; but still, if forcibly removed they die.
(The star-fish is naturally so warm that whatever it lays hold of is found, when suddenly taken away from the animal, to have undergone a process like boiling. Fishermen say that the star-fish is a great pest in the Strait of Pyrrha. In shape it resembles a star as seen in an ordinary drawing. The so-called ‘lungs’ are generated spontaneously. The shells that painters use are a good deal thicker, and the bloom is outside the shell on the surface. These creatures are mostly found on the coast of Caria.) The hermit-crab grows spontaneously out of soil and slime, and finds its way into untenanted shells. As it grows it shifts to a larger shell, as for instance into the shell of the nerites, or of the strombus or the like, and very often into the shell of the small ceryx. After entering new shell, it carries it about, and begins again to feed, and, by and by, as it grows, it shifts again into another larger one.
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Moreover, the animals that are unfurnished with shells grow spontaneously, like the testaceans, as, for instance, the sea-nettles and the sponges in rocky caves.
Of the sea-nettle, or sea-anemone, there are two species; and of these one species lives in hollows and never loosens its hold upon the rocks, and the other lives on smooth flat reefs, free and detached, and shifts its 1127
position from time to time. (Limpets also detach themselves, and shift from place to place.)
In the chambered cavities of sponges pinna-guards or parasites are found. And over the chambers there is a kind of spider’s web, by the opening and closing of which they catch mute fishes; that is to say, they open the web to let the fish get in, and close it again to entrap them.
Of sponges there are three species; the first is of loose porous texture, the second is close textured, the third, which is nicknamed ‘the sponge of Achilles’, is exceptionally fine and close-textured and strong. This sponge is used as a lining to helmets and greaves, for the purpose of deadening the sound of the blow; and this is a very scarce species. Of the close textured sponges such as are particularly hard and rough are nicknamed ‘goats’.
Sponges grow spontaneously either attached to a rock or on sea-beaches, and they get their nutriment in slime: a proof of this statement is the fact that when they are first secured they are found to be full of slime. This is characteristic of all living creatures that get their nutriment by close local attachment. And, by the way, the close-textured sponges are weaker than the more openly porous ones because their attachment extends over a smaller area.
It is said that the sponge is sensitive; and as a proof of this statement they say that if the sponge is made aware of an attempt being made to pluck it from its place of attachment it draws itself together, and it becomes a difficult task to detach it. It makes a similar contractile movement in windy and boisterous weather, obviously with the object of tightening its hold. Some persons express doubts as to the truth of this assertion; as, for instance, the people of Torone.
The sponge breeds parasites, worms, and other creatures, on which, if they be detached, the rock-fishes prey, as they prey also on the remaining stumps of the sponge; but, if the sponge be broken off, it grows again from the remaining stump and the place is soon as well covered as before.
The largest of all sponges are the loose-textured ones, and these are peculiarly abundant on the coast of Lycia. The softest are the close-textured sponges; for, by the way, the so-called sponges of Achilles are harder than these. As a general rule, sponges that are found in deep calm waters are the softest; for usually windy and stormy weather has a tendency to harden them (as it has to harden all similar growing things), and to arrest their growth. And this accounts for the fact that the sponges found in the Hellespont are rough and close-textured; and, as a general rule, 1128
sponges found beyond or inside Cape Malea are, respectively, comparatively soft or comparatively hard. But, by the way, the habitat of the sponge should not be too sheltered and warm, for it has a tendency to decay, like all similar vegetable-like growths. And this accounts for the fact that the sponge is at its best when found in deep water close to shore; for owing to the depth of the water they enjoy shelter alike from stormy winds and from excessive heat.
Whilst they are still alive and before they are washed and cleaned, they are blackish in colour. Their attachment is not made at one particular spot, nor is it made all over their bodies; for vacant pore-spaces intervene. There is a kind of membrane stretched over the under parts; and in the under parts the points of attachment are the more numerous. On the top most of the pores are closed, but four or five are open and visible; and we are told by some that it is through these pores that the animal takes its food.
There is a particular species that is named the ‘aplysia’ or the
‘unwashable’, from the circumstance that it cannot be cleaned. This species has the large open and visible pores, but all the rest of the body is close-textured; and, if it be dissected, it is found to be closer and more glutinous than the ordinary sponge, and, in a word, something lung like in consistency. And, on all hands, it is allowed that this species is sensitive and long-lived. They are distinguished in the sea from ordinary sponges from the circumstance that the ordinary sponges are white while the slime is in them, but that these sponges are under any circumstances black.
And so much with regard to sponges and to generation in the testaceans.
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Of crustaceans, the female crawfish after copulation conceives and retains its eggs for about three months, from about the middle of May to about the middle of August; they then lay the eggs into the folds underneath the belly, and their eggs grow like grubs. This same phenomenon is observable in molluscs also, and in such fishes as are oviparous; for in all these cases the egg continues to grow.
The spawn of the crawfish is of a loose or granular consistency, and is divided into eight parts; for corresponding to each of the flaps on the side there is a gristly formation to which the spawn is attached, and the 1129
entire structure resembles a cluster of grapes; for each gristly formation is split into several parts. This is obvious enough if you draw the parts asunder; but at first sight the whole appears to be one and indivisible.
And the largest are not those nearest to the outlet but those in the middle, and the farthest off are the smallest. The size of the small eggs is that of a small seed in a fig; and they are not quite close to the outlet, but placed middleways; for at both ends, tailwards and trunkwards, there are two intervals devoid of eggs; for it is thus that the flaps also grow.
The side flaps, then, cannot close, but by placing the end flap on them the animal can close up all, and this end-flap serves them for a lid. And in the act of laying its eggs it seems to bring them towards the gristly formations by curving the flap of its tail, and then, squeezing the eggs towards the said gristly formations and maintaining a bent posture, it performs the act of laying. The gristly formations at these seasons increase in size and become receptive of the eggs; for the animal lays its eggs into these formations, just as the sepia lays its eggs among twigs and driftwood.
It lays its eggs, then, in this manner, and after hatching them for about twenty days it rids itself of them all in one solid lump, as is quite plain from outside. And out of these eggs crawfish form in about fifteen days, and these crawfish are caught at times less then a finger’s breadth, or seven-tenths of an inch, in length. The animal, then, lays its eggs before the middle of September, and after the middle of that month throws off its eggs in a lump. With the humped carids or prawns the time for gestation is four months or thereabouts.
Crawfish are found in rough and rocky places, lobsters in smooth places, and neither crawfish nor lobsters are found in muddy ones; and this accounts for the fact that lobsters are found in the Hellespont and on the coast of Thasos, and crawfish in the neighbourhood of Sigeum and Mount Athos. Fishermen, accordingly, when they want to catch these various creatures out at sea, take bearings on the beach and elsewhere that tell them where the ground at the bottom is stony and where soft with slime. In winter and spring these animals keep in near to land, in summer they keep in deep water; thus at various times seeking respectively for warmth or coolness.
The so-called arctus or bear-crab lays its eggs at about the same time as the crawfish; and consequently in winter and in the spring-time, before laying their eggs, they are at their best, and after laying at their worst.
They cast their shell in the spring-time (just as serpents shed their so-called ‘old-age’ or slough), both directly after birth and in later life; this is 1130
true both of crabs and crawfish. And, by the way, all crawfish are long lived.
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Molluscs, after pairing and copulation, lay a white spawn; and this spawn, as in the case of the testacean, gets granular in time. The octopus discharges into its hole, or into a potsherd or into any similar cavity, a structure resembling the tendrils of a young vine or the fruit of the white poplar, as has been previously observed. The eggs, when the female has laid them, are clustered round the sides of the hole. They are so numerous that, if they be removed they suffice to fill a vessel much larger than the animal’s body in which they were contained. Some fifty days later, the eggs burst and the little polypuses creep out, like little spiders, in great numbers; the characteristic form of their limbs is not yet to be discerned in detail, but their general outline is clear enough. And, by the way, they are so small and helpless that the greater number perish; it is a fact that they have been seen so extremely minute as to be absolutely without organization, but nevertheless when touched they moved. The eggs of the sepia look like big black myrtle-berries, and they are linked all together like a bunch of grapes, clustered round a centre, and are not easily sundered from one another: for the male exudes over them some moist glairy stuff, which constitutes the sticky gum. These eggs increase in size; and they are white at the outset, but black and larger after the sprinkling of the male seminal fluid.
When it has come into being the young sepia is first distinctly formed inside out of the white substance, and when the egg bursts it comes out.
The inner part is formed as soon as the female lays the egg, something like a hail-stone; and out of this substance the young sepia grows by a head-attachment, just as young birds grow by a belly-attachment. What is the exact nature of the navel-attachment has not yet been observed, except that as the young sepia grows the white substance grows less and less in size, and at length, as happens with the yolk in the case of birds, the white substance in the case of the young sepia disappears. In the case of the young sepia, as in the case of the young of most animals, the eyes at first seem very large. To illustrate this by way of a figure, let A represent the ovum, B and C the eyes, and D the sepidium, or body of the little sepia. (See diagram.)
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The female sepia goes pregnant in the spring-time, and lays its eggs after fifteen days of gestation; after the eggs are laid there comes in another fifteen days something like a bunch of grapes, and at the bursting of these the young sepiae issue forth. But if, when the young ones are fully formed, you sever the outer covering a moment too soon, the young creatures eject excrement, and their colour changes from white to red in their alarm.
Crustaceans, then, hatch their eggs by brooding over them as they carry them about beneath their bodies; but the octopus, the sepia, and the like hatch their eggs without stirring from the spot where they may have laid them, and this statement is particularly applicable to the sepia; in fact, the nest of the female sepia is often seen exposed to view close in to shore. The female octopus at times sits brooding over her eggs, and at other times squats in front of her hole, stretching out her tentacles on guard.
The sepia lays her spawn near to land in the neighbourhood of seaweed or reeds or any off-sweepings such as brushwood, twigs, or stones; and fishermen place heaps of faggots here and there on purpose, and on to such heaps the female deposits a long continuous roe in shape like a vine tendril. It lays or spirts out the spawn with an effort, as though there were difficulty in the process. The female calamary spawns at sea; and it emits the spawn, as does the sepia, in the mass.
The calamary and the cuttle-fish are short-lived, as, with few exceptions, they never see the year out; and the same statement is applicable to the octopus.
From one single egg comes one single sepia; and this is likewise true of the young calamary.
The male calamary differs from the female; for if its gill-region be dilated and examined there are found two red formations resembling breasts, with which the male is unprovided. In the sepia, apart from this distinction in the sexes, the male, as has been stated, is more mottled than the female.
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With regard to insects, that the male is less than the female and that he mounts upon her back, and how he performs the act of copulation and the circumstance that he gives over reluctantly, all this has already been 1132
set forth, most cases of insect copulation this process is speedily followed up by parturition.
All insects engender grubs, with the exception of a species of butterfly; and the female of this species lays a hard egg, resembling the seed of the cnecus, with a juice inside it. But from the grub, the young animal does not grow out of a mere portion of it, as a young animal grows from a portion only of an egg, but the grub entire grows and the animal becomes differentiated out of it.
And of insects some are derived from insect congeners, as the venom-spider and the common-spider from the venom-spider and the common-spider, and so with the attelabus or locust, the acris or grasshopper, and the tettix or cicada. 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 ex