by Aristotle
BOOK V
1 · As to the parts internal and external that all animals are furnished with, [25] and further as to the senses, to voice, and sleep, and the duality of sex, all these topics have now been touched upon. It now remains for us to discuss, duly and in order, their several modes of propagation. [539a1]
These modes are many and diverse, and in some respects are like, and in other respects are unlike to one another. As the genera have already been divided, we must attempt to follow the same divisions in our present argument; only that [5] whereas in the former case we started with a consideration of the parts of man, in the present case it behoves us to treat of man last of all because he involves most discussion. We shall commence, then, with testaceans, and then proceed to [10] crustaceans, and then to the other genera in due order; and these other genera are molluscs, and insects, then fishes viviparous and fishes oviparous, and next birds; and afterwards we shall treat of animals provided with feet, both such as are oviparous and such as are viviparous; and we may observe that some quadrupeds are [15] viviparous, but that the only viviparous biped is man.
Now there is one property that animals are found to have in common with plants. For some plants are generated from the seed of plants, whilst other plants are self-generated through the formation of some principle similar to a seed; and of [20] these some derive their nutriment from the ground, whilst others grow inside other plants, as is mentioned in my treatise on Plants. So with animals some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as is the case with a number of insects, while others are spontaneously [25] generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several organs.
In animals where generation takes place from animals of the same kind, wherever there is duality of sex generation is due to copulation. In the group of fishes, however, there are some that are neither male nor female, and these, while they are identical generically with other fish, differ from them specifically; but [30] there are others that stand altogether isolated and apart by themselves. Other fishes there are that are always female and never male, and from them are produced eggs like the wind-eggs in birds. Such eggs in birds are all unfruitful; but it is their nature to be independently capable of generation up to the egg-stage, unless indeed there [539b1] be some other mode than the one familiar to us of intercourse with the male; but concerning these topics we shall treat more precisely later on. In the case of certain fishes, however, after they have spontaneously generated eggs, these eggs develop into living animals; only that in certain of these cases development is spontaneous, [5] and in others is not independent of the male; and the method of proceeding in regard to these matters will be set forth by and by, for the method is somewhat like to the method followed in the case of birds. But whenever creatures are spontaneously generated, either in other animals, in the soil, or on plants, or in the parts of these, and when such are generated male and female, then from the copulation of such spontaneously generated males and females there is generated a something—a [10] something never identical in shape with the parents, but a something imperfect. For instance, the issue of copulation in lice is nits; in flies, grubs; in fleas, grubs egg-like in shape; and from these issues the parent-species is never reproduced, nor is any animal produced at all, but the like things only.
First, then, we must proceed to treat of copulation in regard to such animals as [15] copulate; and then after this to treat in due order of other matters, both the exceptional and those of general occurrence.
2 · Those animals, then, copulate in which there is a duality of sex, and the modes of covering in such animals are not in all cases similar nor analogous. For the red-blooded animals that are viviparous and furnished with feet have in all cases organs adapted for procreation, but the sexes do not in all cases come together in [20] like manner. Thus, retromingent animals copulate with a rearward presentment, as is the case with the lion, the hare, and the lynx; though in the case of the hare, the female often first mounts the male.
The case is similar in most other such animals; that is to say, the majority of quadrupeds copulate as best they can, the male mounting the female; and this is the [25] only method of copulating adopted by birds, though there are certain diversities of method observed even in birds. For in some cases the female squats on the ground and the male mounts on top of her, as is the case with the bustard, and the domestic [30] fowl; in other cases, the male mounts without the female squatting, as with the crane; for, with these birds, the male mounts on to the back of the female and covers her, and like the cock-sparrow consumes but very little time in the operation. Of quadrupeds, bears perform the operation lying prone on one another, in the same [540a1] way as other quadrupeds do while standing up; that is to say, with the belly of the male pressed to the back of the female. Hedgehogs copulate erect, belly to belly.
With regard to large-sized vivipara, the hind only very rarely allows the stag to complete the act and the same is the case with the cow as regards the bull, owing to [5] the rigidity of the penis of the bull. In point of fact, the females elicit the sperm in the act of withdrawing from underneath him; and this phenomenon has been observed in the case of the hind, domesticated, of course. Covering with the wolf is the same as with the dog. Cats do not copulate with a rearward presentment, but the male stands erect and the female puts herself underneath him; and the female cat is [10] naturally lecherous, and wheedles the male on to sexual commerce, and caterwauls during the operation. Camels copulate with the female in a sitting posture, and the male straddles over and covers her, not with the hinder presentment but like the [15] other quadrupeds, and they pass the whole day long in the operation; when thus engaged they retire to lonely spots, and none but their keeper dare approach them. And the penis of the camel is so sinewy that bow-strings are manufactured out of it. Elephants, also, copulate in lonely places, and especially by river-sides in their usual [20] haunts; the female squats down, and straddles with her legs, and the male mounts and covers her. The seal covers like all retromingent animals, and in this species the copulation extends over a lengthened time, as is the case with the dog and bitch; and [25] the penis in the male seal is exceptionally large.
3 · Oviparous quadrupeds cover one another in the same way. That is to say, in some cases the male mounts the female precisely as in the viviparous animals, as is observed in both the land and the sea tortoise. . . .1 And these creatures have an [30] organ in which the ducts converge, and with which they perform the act of copulation, as is also observed in the toad,2 the frog, and all other animals of the same group.3
[540b1] 4 · Long animals devoid of feet, like serpents and muraenae, intertwine in coition, belly to belly. And, in fact, serpents coil round one another so tightly as to present the appearance of a single serpent with a pair of heads. The same mode is followed by the saurians; that is to say, they coil round one another in the act of [5] coition.
5 · All fishes, with the exception of the flat selachians, lie side by side, and copulate belly to belly. Fishes, however, that are flat and furnished with tails—as the ray, the sting-ray and the like—copulate not only in this way, but also, where [10] the tail from its thickness is no impediment, by mounting of the male upon the female, belly to back. But the angel-fish, and other like fishes where the tail is large, copulate only by rubbing against one another sideways, belly to belly. Some men assure us that they have seen some of the selachia copulating hindways, like dog and [15] bitch. In all the selachian species the female is larger than the male; and the same is the case with other fishes for the most part. And among selachia are included, besides those already named, the ox-fish, the lamia, the aetos, the torpedo, the fishing-frog, and all the dogfish. Selachia, then, of all kinds, have in many instances [20] been observed copulating in the way above mentioned; for in all viviparous animals the process of copulation is of longer duration than in the ovipara.<
br />
It is the same with the dolphin and with all cetaceans; that is to say, they come side by side, male and female, and copulate, and the act extends over a time which is neither short nor very long.
[25] Again, in selachian fishes the male, in some species, differs from the female in the fact that he is furnished with two appendages hanging down from about the exit of the residuum, and that the female is not so furnished—this is observed in e.g. the dog-fish.
Now neither fishes nor any animals devoid of feet are furnished with testicles, [30] but male serpents and male fishes have a pair of ducts which fill with milt at the rutting season, and discharge, in all cases, a milk-like juice. These ducts unite, as in [541a1] birds; for birds have their testicles in their interior, and so have all ovipara that are furnished with feet. And this union of the ducts is so far continued4 and of such extension as to enter the receptive organ in the female.
In viviparous animals furnished with feet there is outwardly one and the same [5] duct for the sperm and the liquid residuum; but there are separate ducts internally, as has been observed before in the differentiation of the organs. And with such animals as are not viviparous the same passage serves externally for the discharge also of the solid residuum; although, internally, there are two passages near to one another. And these remarks apply to both male and female; for these animals are [10] unprovided with a bladder except in the case of the tortoise; and the she-tortoise, though furnished with a bladder, has only one passage; and tortoises belong to the ovipara.
In the case of oviparous fishes the process of coition is less open to observation. That is why most people suppose that the female becomes impregnated by swallowing the milt of the male. And there can be no doubt that this proceeding is [15] often witnessed; for at the rutting season the females follow the males and perform this operation, and strike the males with their mouths under the belly, and the males are thereby induced to part with the sperm sooner and more plentifully. And, further, at the spawning season the males go in pursuit of the females, and, as the female spawns, the males swallow the eggs; and the species is continued in existence by the spawn that survives this process. On the coast of Phoenicia they catch them [20] by means of one another: that is to say, by using the male of the grey mullet as a decoy they collect and net the female, and by using the female, the male.
The repeated observation of this phenomenon has led to the notion that the process was equivalent to coition, but the fact is that a similar phenomenon is observable in quadrupeds. For at the rutting seasons both the males and the females [25] spray, and the two sexes take to smelling each other’s genitals.
[With partridges, if the female gets to leeward of the male, she becomes thereby impregnated. And often when they happen to be in heat she is affected in this way by the voice of the male, or by his breathing down on her as he flies [30] overhead; and both the male and the female partridge keep the mouth wide open and protrude the tongue in the process of coition.]5
The actual process of copulation on the part of oviparous fishes is seldom accurately observed, owing to the fact that, having come alongside, they very soon part. But, for all that, the process has been observed in these cases too to take place in the manner above described.
6 · Cephalopods, such as the octopus, the cuttlefish, and the calamary, have [541b1] sexual intercourse all in the same way; that is to say, they unite at the mouth, by an interlacing of their tentacles. When, then, the octopus rests its so-called head against the ground and spreads abroad its tentacles, the other fits into the [5] outspreading of these tentacles, and the two then bring their suckers into mutual connexion.
Some assert that the male has a kind of penis in one of his tentacles, the one in which are the two largest suckers; and they further assert that the organ is sinewy in [10] character, growing attached right up to the middle of the tentacle, which is admitted into the nostril of the female.
Now cuttlefish and calamaries swim about closely intertwined, with mouths and tentacles facing one another and fitting closely together; and they fit their so-called nostrils into one another, and the one sex swims backwards and the other [15] frontwards during the operation. And the female lays its spawn by the so-called ‘blow-hole’; and some declare that it is at this organ that the coition really takes place.
7 · Crustaceans copulate, as the crayfish, the lobster, the carid6 and the like, just like the retromingent quadrupeds, when the one animal turns up its tail and the [20] other puts his tail on the other’s tail. Copulation takes place in the early spring, near to the shore; and, in fact, the process has often been observed in the case of all these animals. Sometimes it takes place about the time when the figs begin to ripen. [25] Lobsters and carids copulate in like manner.
Crabs copulate at the front parts of one another, throwing their overlapping opercula to meet one another: first the smaller crab mounts the larger at the rear; after he has mounted, the larger one turns on one side. Now, the female differs in no [30] respect from the male except in the circumstance that its operculum is larger, more elevated, and more hairy, and into this operculum it spawns its eggs and in the same neighbourhood is the outlet of the residuum. In the copulative process of these animals there is no protrusion of a member from one animal into the other.
[542a1] 8 · Insects copulate at the hinder end, and the smaller individuals mount the larger; and the smaller individual is the male. The female pushes from underneath her sexual organ into the body of the male above, not the male into the female, as in other creatures; and this organ in the case of some insects appears to be [5] disproportionately large when compared to the size of the body, and that too in very minute creatures; in some insects the disproportion is not so striking. This phenomenon may be witnessed if any one will pull asunder flies that are copulating—but they are hard to separate; for the intercourse of the sexes in their case is of long duration, as may be observed with common everyday insects, such as the fly [10] and the cantharis. They all copulate in the manner above described, the fly, the cantharis, the sphondyle, [the phalangium spider],7 and any others of the kind that copulate at all. The phalangia—that is to say, such of the species as spin webs—perform the operation in the following way: the female takes hold of the suspended web at the middle and gives a pull, and the male gives a counter pull; this [15] operation they repeat until they are drawn in together and interlaced at the hinder ends; for this mode of copulation suits them in consequence of the rotundity of their stomachs.
So much for the mode of sexual intercourse in all animals; but, for each kind of animal, there are definite seasons and ages for copulation.
[20] Animals in general seem naturally disposed to this intercourse at about the same period of the year, and that is when winter is changing into summer. And this is the season of spring, in which almost all things that fly or walk or swim take to [25] pairing. Some animals pair and breed in autumn also and in winter, as is the case with certain aquatic animals and certain birds. Man pairs and breeds at all seasons, as is the case also with domesticated animals, owing to the shelter and good feeding they enjoy: that is to say, with those whose period of gestation is also comparatively brief, as the sow and the bitch, and with those birds that breed frequently. Many [30] animals time the season of intercourse with a view to the right nurture subsequently of their young. In the human species, the male is more under sexual excitement in [542b1] winter, and the female in summer.
With birds the far greater part, as has been said, pair and breed during the spring and early summer, with the exception of the halcyon.
The halcyon breeds at the season of the winter solstice. Accordingly, when this season is marked with calm weather, the name of ‘halcyon days’ is given to the seven [5] days preceding, as to as many following, the solstice; as Simonides the poet says:—
God lulls for fourteen days the winds to sleep
In winter; and this temperate interlude
Men call the Holy Season, when the deep [10]
And these days are calm, when southerly winds prevail at the solstice, northerly ones having been the accompaniment of the Pleiads. The halcyon is said to take seven days for building her nest, and the other seven for laying and hatching her eggs. In our country there are not always halcyon days about the time of the solstice, [15] but in the Sicilian seas this season of calm is pretty regular. The bird lays about five eggs.
9 · The shearwater and the gull lay their eggs on rocks bordering on the sea, [20] two or three at a time; but the gull lays in the summer, and the shearwater at the beginning of spring, just after the solstice, and it broods over its eggs as birds do in general. And neither of these birds resorts to a hiding-place.
The halcyon is the most rarely seen of all birds. It is seen only about the time of the setting of the Pleiads and the solstice. When ships are lying at anchor, it will [25] hover about a vessel and then disappear in a moment, and Stesichorus alludes to this peculiarity. The nightingale also breeds at the beginning of summer, and lays five or six eggs; from autumn until spring it retires to a hiding-place. [30]