by Aristotle
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 the grubs are round-shaped at the outset. And the spider, when it lays its eggs, broods over them, and in three days they take definite shape. [555b1]
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, 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 [5] 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 at first 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 [10] have woven, and brood over it until the eggs are hatched. The smooth spider is much less prolific than the phalangium. These phalangia, when they grow to full size, very often surround the mother and eject and kill her; and not seldom they kill the male as well, if they catch him; for 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. [15] The spider attains its full growth in about four weeks.
28 · Grasshoppers copulate in the same way as other insects; that is to say, [20] 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 (the male 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 and are enveloped by a sort of thin clay, like a membrane; in this [25] 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 at once it grows larger and larger.
[556a1] 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 no grasshoppers are [5] 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.]26 During the winter their eggs remain in the ground; and with the coming of summer the last year’s larva develops into the grasshopper.
[10] 29 · The 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.
[15] 30 · Of the cicada there are two kinds; one, small in size, the first to come and the last to disappear; the other, large, 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 [20] cicada is by some designated the ‘chirper’, and the small cicada the cicadelle. And such of the latter 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. For [25] 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, not the female into the male as is the case with insects in general; and the female cicada has a cleft generative organ into which the male discharges the sperm.27
They lay their eggs in fallow lands, boring a hole with the pointed organ they [30] carry in the rear, as do the locusts likewise; for the locust lays its eggs in untilled lands, and this fact accounts for their numbers in the territory adjacent to the city of Cyrene. The cicadae also lay their eggs in the canes which prop up vines, [556b1] 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 nymph, and the creature is sweetest to the taste at this [5] 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. The creature, also, at once turns black in colour and [10] 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 [15] like water. Farmers, in regard to this, say that they are voiding urine, i.e. 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 [20] 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 generate what are called ‘nits’, and these nits generate nothing.
Of these insects the flea is generated out of the slightest amount of putrefying [25] 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 these the lice jump out. In some men the appearance of lice is a disease, in cases where the body is surcharged [557a1] with moisture; and, indeed, men have been known to succumb to this louse-disease, as Aleman 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 [5] 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 [10] 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 [15] 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 Cynoroestes. In [20] all animals that are subject to lice, the latter originate from the animals themselves. Moreover, in those bathing animals that have lice, 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 a
re generated not out of the fish [25] but out of slime; and they resemble multipedal wood-lice, only that their tail is flat. There is only one kind of sea-louse; they are found everywhere, and are particularly numerous on the fins. And all these insects28 are multipedal and devoid of blood.
The parasite that feeds on the tunny is found in the region of the fins; it [30] 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 louse. This fish gets exceedingly fat from enjoying an abundance of food while the dolphin is out in pursuit of its prey.
[557b1] 32 · Other animalcules besides these are generated, as we have already remarked, some in wool or in articles made of wool, as the 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 with them; for the creature drinks up any moisture that may be there, and dries up the woollen substance. This [5] grub is found also in men’s clothes.
A creature is also found in cheese29 long laid by, just as in wood, and it is the smallest of animalcules and is white in colour, and is designated the mite. In books also other animalcules are found, some resembling the grubs found in garments, [10] 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. [15] Its head projects outside its shell, mottled in colour, and its feet are near the end, 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 [20] 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 caterpillar, and lives in a motionless condition. But as yet it is not known into what winged condition it is transformed. [25]
The fruit of the wild fig contains the fig-wasp. This creature is a grub at first; but in due time the husk peels off and the wasp leaves the husk behind it and flies away, and enters into the fruit of the fig-tree through its orifice,30 and causes the fruit not to drop off; and with a view to this phenomenon, farmers are in the habit of [30] 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 [558a1] 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, like birds’ eggs, and [5] after laying them buries them in the ground and treads the ground hard over them; having done that, it comes back from time to time and broods over the eggs on the surface of the ground, and hatches the eggs the next year. The freshwater tortoise leaves the water and lays its eggs. It digs a hole of a cask-like 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 [10] 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 [15] 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 the creature is very long-lived. And the disproportion is [20] 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; and some say that the animal goes on growing to the end of its days.
34 · With regard to serpents, the viper is externally viviparous, having been [25] 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 [30] at times the young viper eats its way out from the inside of the egg. The mother viper brings forth all its young all at once in one day, more than twenty in number. [558b1] The other serpents are externally oviparous, and their eggs are strung on to one another like a woman’s necklace; after the mother has laid her eggs in the ground she broods over them, and hatches the eggs in the following year.
BOOK VI
[5] 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 [10] year, as for instance the fowl 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 the higher breeds are less prolific than the inferior ones. The Adrianic hens are small-sized, but they lay every [15] 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, [20] as has been stated, continuously; 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 [25] a sitting, as the hen. All 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 [559a1] 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 nest in sheltered places; but the bird called eirops in Boeotia, alone of all [5] 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 [10] 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 martin 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.
[15] 2 · The egg in the case of all birds alike is hard-shelled, if it be the produce of copulation and has not been damaged—for some hens lay soft eggs. 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 i
s to say, the eggs of water-birds have comparatively more [20] of the yellow 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. [25]
Eggs are not symmetrically shaped at both ends: in other words, one end is 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 [559b1] 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. [5]
The sperm of all 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 [10] is subject to differentiation, 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 [15] the process is completed—unless it comes out diseased. 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 monstrosities. [20]