by Aristotle
[15] There are other birds that live on fruit and herbage, such as the wild pigeon or ring-dove, the common pigeon, the rock-dove, and the turtle-dove. The ring-dove and the common pigeon are visible at all seasons; the turtle-dove only in the summer, for in winter it lurks in some hole or other and is never seen. The rock-dove [20] is chiefly visible in the autumn, and is caught at that season; it is larger than the common pigeon but smaller than the wild one; it is generally caught while drinking. These pigeons bring their young ones with them when they visit this country. All our other birds come to us in the early summer and build their nests here, and the greater part of them rear their young on animal food, with the sole exception of the pigeon and its varieties.
[25] The whole genus of birds may be pretty well divided into such as procure their food on dry land, such as frequent rivers and lakes, and such as live on or by the sea.
Of water-birds such as are web-footed live actually on the water, while such as are split-footed live by the edge of it—and water-birds that are not carnivorous live [593b1] on water-plants, but most of them live on fish, like the heron and the spoonbill that frequent the banks of lakes and rivers; and the spoonbill is smaller than the common heron, and has a long flat bill. There are furthermore the stork and the seamew; and [5] the seamew is ashen-coloured. There is also the schoenilus, the cinclus, and the white-rump. Of these smaller birds the last mentioned is the largest, being about the size of the common thrush; all three may be described as ‘wagtails’. Then there is the scalidris, with plumage ashen-grey, but speckled. Moreover, the family of the kingfishers live by the waterside. Of kingfishers there are two varieties; one that sits [10] on reeds and sings; the other, the larger of the two, is without a note. Both these varieties are blue on the back. There is also the trochilus. The kingfisher and the cerylus are found near the seaside. The crow also feeds on such animal life as is cast [15] up on the beach, for the bird is omnivorous. There are also the white gull, the cepphus, the aethyia, and the charadrius.
Of web-footed birds, the larger species live on the banks of rivers and lakes; as the swan, the duck, the coot, the grebe, and the teal—a bird resembling the duck but less in size—and the cormorant. This bird is the size of a stork, only that its legs [20] are shorter; it is web-footed and is a good swimmer; its plumage is black. It roosts on trees, and is the only one of all such birds as these that is found to build its nest in a tree. Further there is the goose, the little gregarious goose, the vulpanser, the aix [25] and the penelops. The sea-eagle lives in the neighbourhood of the sea and seeks its quarry in lagoons.
A great number of birds are omnivorous. Birds of prey feed on any animal or bird that they may catch, except that they never touch one of their own genus, whereas fishes often devour members actually of their own species. [594a1]
Birds, as a rule, are very spare drinkers. In fact birds of prey never drink at all, excepting a very few, and these drink very rarely; and this last observation is peculiarly applicable to the kestrel. The kite has been seen to drink, but he certainly drinks very seldom.
4 · Animals that are coated with tessellates—such as the lizard and the other quadrupeds, and the serpents—are omnivorous: at all events they are carnivorous [5] and graminivorous; and serpents are of all animals the greatest gluttons.
Tessellated animals are spare drinkers, as are also all such animals as have a spongy lung, and such a lung, scantily supplied with blood, is found in all oviparous animals. Serpents have an insatiate appetite for wine; consequently, at times men [10] hunt for vipers by pouring wine into saucers and putting them into the interstices of walls, and the creatures are caught when inebriated. Serpents are carnivorous, and whenever they catch an animal they extract all its juices and eject the creature whole. [And this is done by all other creatures of similar habits, as for instance the spider; only that the spider sucks out the juices of its prey outside, and the serpent [15] does so in its belly.]10 The serpent takes any food presented to him, eats birds and animals, and swallows eggs entire. But after taking his prey he stretches himself until he stands straight out to the very tip, and then he contracts and squeezes [20] himself into little compass, so that the swallowed mass may pass down his outstretched body; and this action on his part is due to the tenuity and length of his gullet. Spiders and snakes can both go without food for a long time; and this remark may be verified by observation of specimens kept alive in the shops of the apothecaries.
[25] 5 · Of viviparous quadrupeds, such as are fierce and saw-toothed are without exception carnivorous; though, by the way, it is stated of the wolf, but of no other animal, that in extremity of hunger it will eat a certain kind of earth. These carnivorous animals never eat grass except when they are sick, just as dogs bring on a vomit by eating grass and thereby purge themselves.
[30] The solitary wolf is more apt to attack man than the wolf that goes with a pack.
The animal called ‘glanus’ by some and ‘hyaena’ by others is as large as a wolf, [594b1] with a mane like a horse, only that the hair is stiffer and longer and extends over the entire length of the chine. It will lie in wait for a man and chase him, [and will inveigle a dog within its reach by making a noise that resembles the retching noise of a man vomiting.]11 It is exceedingly fond of putrefied flesh, and will burrow in a [5] graveyard to gratify this propensity.
The bear is omnivorous. It eats fruit, and is enabled by the suppleness of its body to climb a tree; it also eats vegetables, and it will break up a hive to get at the honey; it eats crabs and ants also, and is carnivorous. It is so powerful that it will [10] attack not only the deer but the wild boar, if it can take it unawares, and also the bull. After coming to close quarters with the bull it falls on its back in front of the animal, and, when the bull proceeds to butt, the bear seizes hold of the bull’s horns with its front paws, fastens its teeth into his shoulder, and drags him down to the [15] ground. For a short time together it can walk erect on its hind legs. All the flesh it eats it first allows to become carrion.
The lion, like all other savage and saw-toothed animals, is carnivorous. It devours its food greedily, and often swallows its prey entire without rending it at all; it will then go fasting for two or three days together, being rendered capable of this [20] abstinence by its previous surfeit. It is a spare drinker. It discharges the solid residuum sparingly, about every other day or at irregular intervals, and the substance of it is hard and dry like the excrement of dog. The wind discharged from off its stomach is pungent, and its urine emits a strong odour, a phenomenon which, [25] in the case of dogs, accounts for their habit of sniffing at trees; for the lion, like the dog, lifts its leg to void its urine. It infects the food it eats with a strong smell by breathing on it, and when the animal is cut open an overpowering vapour exhales from its inside.
[30] Some wild quadrupeds feed in lakes and rivers; the seal is the only one that gets its living on the sea. To the former class of animals belong the marten, the otter, and [595a1] the beaver. The beaver is flatter than the otter and has strong teeth; it often at night-time emerges from the water and goes nibbling at the bark of the aspens that fringe the riversides. The otter will bite a man, and it is said that whenever it bites it will never let go until it hears a bone crack. The hair of the beaver is rough, [5] intermediate in appearance between the hair of the seal and the hair of the deer.
6 · Saw-toothed animals drink by lapping, as do also some animals with teeth differently formed, as the mouse. Animals whose upper and lower teeth meet evenly drink by suction, as the horse and the ox; the bear neither laps nor sucks, but [10] gulps. Birds, as a rule, drink by suction, but the long-necked birds stop and elevate their heads at intervals; the purple coot is the only one that gulps.
Horned animals, domesticated or wild, and all such as are not saw-toothed, are [15] all frugivorous and graminivorous, save under great stress of hunger. The pig is an exception; it cares little for grass or fruit, but of all animals it is the fondest of roots, owing to the fact that
its snout is peculiarly adapted for digging them out of the ground; it is also of all animals the most easily pleased in the matter of food. It takes on fat more rapidly in proportion to its size than any other animal; in fact, a pig can [20] be fattened for the market in sixty days. Pig-dealers can tell the amount of flesh taken on, by having first weighed the animal while it was being starved. Before the fattening process begins, the creature must be starved for three days; (animals in general will take on fat if subjected previously to a course of starvation); after the three days, pig-breeders feed the animal lavishly. Breeders in Thrace, when [25] fattening pigs, give them a drink on the first day; then they miss one, and then two days, then three and four, until the interval extends over seven days. This animal is fattened on barley, millet, figs, acorns, wild pears, and cucumbers. These animals—and other animals that have warm bellies—are fattened by repose. [Pigs also fatten the better by being allowed to wallow in mud. They like to feed in [595b1] batches of the same age. A pig will give battle even to a wolf.]12 A sixth part of what it weighs when living is made up of hair, blood, and the like. When suckling their young, sows—like all other animals—get attenuated. So much for these animals. [5]
7 · Cattle feed on fruit and grass, and fatten on vegetables that tend to cause flatulency, such as bitter vetch or bruised beans or bean-stalks. [The older ones also will fatten if they be fed up after an incision has been made into their hide, and air blown into it.]13 Cattle will fatten also on barley, in its natural state or winnowed, or [10] on sweet food, such as figs, or pulp from the wine-press,14 or on elm-leaves. [But nothing is so fattening as the heat of the sun and wallowing in warm waters. If the horns of young cattle be smeared with wax, you may mould them to any shape you please, and cattle are less subject to disease of the hoof if you smear the horns with [15] wax, pitch, or olive oil.]15 Herded cattle suffer more when they are forced to change their pasture-ground by frost than when snow is the cause of change. Cattle grow all the more in size when they are kept from sexual commerce over a number of years; and it is with a view to growth in size that in Epirus the so-called Pyrrhic cattle are [20] not allowed intercourse with the bull until they are nine years old; from which circumstance they are nicknamed the ‘unbulled’ cattle. Of these they say that there are only about four hundred in the world, that they are the private property of the royal family, and that they cannot thrive out of Epirus although people elsewhere have tried.
8 · Horses, mules, and asses feed on fruit and grass, but are fattened chiefly [25] by drink. Just in proportion as beasts of burden drink water, so will they more or less enjoy their food, and a place will give good or bad feeding according as the water is good or bad. Green corn, while ripening, will give a smooth coat; but such corn is injurious if the spikes are hard. The first crop of clover is unwholesome, and so is [30] clover over which ill-scented water runs; for the clover is sure to get the taint of the water. Cattle like clear water for drinking; but the horse in this respect resembles the camel, for the camel likes turbid and thick water, and will never drink from a [596a1] stream until he has trampled it into a turbid condition. The camel can go without water for as much as four days, but after that when he drinks, he drinks in immense quantities.
9 · The elephant at the most can eat nine Macedonian medimni of barley at [5] one meal; but so large an amount is unwholesome. As a general rule it can take six or seven medimni, five medimni of wheat, and five mareis of wine—six cotylae going to the maris. An elephant has been known to drink right off fourteen Macedonian metretae of water, and another eight metretae later in the day.
[10] Camels live for about thirty years; in some exceptional cases they live much longer, and instances have been known of their living to the age of a hundred. The elephant is said by some to live for about two hundred years; by others, for three hundred.
10 · Sheep and goats are graminivorous, but sheep browse assiduously and [15] steadily, whereas goats shift their ground rapidly, and browse only on the tips of the herbage. Sheep are fattened by drinking, and accordingly they give the flocks salt every five days in summer, to the extent of one medimnus to the hundred sheep, and [20] this is found to render a flock healthier and fatter. In fact they mix salt with the greater part of their food; a large amount of salt is mixed into their bran (for the reason that they drink more when thirsty), and in autumn they get cucumbers with a sprinkling of salt on them; this admixture of salt in their food tends also to increase the quantity of milk. If sheep be kept on the move at midday they will drink more copiously towards evening; and if the ewes be fed with salted food as the lambing [25] season draws near they will get larger udders. Sheep are fattened by twigs of the olive or of the oleaster, by vetch, and bran of every kind; and these articles of food fatten all the more if they be first sprinkled with brine. Sheep too will take on flesh all the better if they be first put for three days through a process of starving. In autumn, water from the north is more wholesome for sheep than water from the [30] south. Pasture grounds are all the better if they have a westerly aspect.
Sheep will lose flesh if they be kept overmuch on the move or be subjected to any hardship. In winter time shepherds can easily distinguish the vigorous sheep from the weakly, from the fact that the vigorous sheep are covered with hoar-frost while the weakly ones are quite free of it; the fact being that the weakly ones feeling [596b1] oppressed with the burden shake themselves and so get rid of it. The flesh of all quadrupeds deteriorates in marshy pastures, and is the better on high grounds. Sheep that have flat tails can stand the winter less well than long-tailed sheep, and [5] short-fleeced sheep than the shaggy-fleeced; and sheep with crisp wool stand the rigour of winter very poorly. Sheep are healthier than goats, but goats are stronger than sheep. [The fleeces and the wool of sheep that have been killed by wolves, as also the clothes made from them, are exceptionally infested with lice.]16 [10]
11 · Of insects, such as have teeth are omnivorous; such as have a tongue feed on liquids only, extracting with that organ juices from all quarters. And of these latter some may be called omnivorous, inasmuch as they feed on every kind of juice, as for instance, the common fly; others are blood-suckers, such as the gadfly [15] and the horse-fly, others again live on the juices of fruits and plants. The bee is the only insect that does not settle on things rotten; it will touch no article of food unless it have a sweet-tasting juice, and it is particularly fond of drinking water if it be found bubbling up clear from a spring.
So much for the food of animals of the various genera. [20]
12 · The habits of animals are all connected with either breeding and the rearing of young, or with the procuring a due supply of food; and these habits are modified so as to suit cold and heat and the variations of the seasons. For all animals have an instinctive perception of the changes of temperature, and, just as men seek [25] shelter in houses in winter, or as men of great possessions spend their summer in cool places and their winter in sunny ones, so also all animals that can do so shift their habitat at various seasons.
Some creatures can make provision against change without stirring from their [30] ordinary haunts; others migrate, quitting Pontus and the cold countries after the autumnal equinox to avoid the approaching winter, and after the spring equinox [597a1] migrating from warm lands to cool lands to avoid the coming heat. In some cases they migrate from places near at hand, in others they may be said to come from the ends of the world, as in the case of the crane; for these birds migrate from the steppes of Scythia to the marshlands south of Egypt where the Nile has its source. [5] [And it is here that they are said to fight with the pygmies; and the story is not fabulous, but there is in reality a race of dwarfish men, and the horses are little in proportion, and the men live in caves underground.]17 Pelicans also migrate, and fly [10] from the Strymon to the Ister, and breed on the banks of this river. They depart in flocks, and the birds in front wait for those in the rear, owing to the fact that when the flock is passing over the intervening mountain range, the birds i
n the rear lose sight of their companions in the van.
[15] Fishes also in a similar manner shift their habitat now out of the Euxine and now into it. In winter they move from the outer sea in towards land in quest of heat; in summer they shift from shallow waters to the deep sea to escape the heat.
Weakly birds in winter and in frosty weather come down to the plains for [20] warmth, and in summer migrate to the hills because of the heat. The more weakly an animal is the greater hurry will it be in to migrate on account of extremes of temperature, either hot or cold; thus the mackerel migrates in advance of the tunnies, and the quail in advance of the cranes. The former migrates in the month of [25] Boedromion, and the latter in the month of Maemacterion. All creatures are fatter in migrating from cold to heat than in migrating from heat to cold; thus the quail is fatter in autumn than in spring. The migration from cold countries is contemporaneous with the close of the hot season. Animals are in better trim for breeding [30] purposes in spring-time, when they change from hot to cool lands.
Of birds, the crane, as has been said, migrates from one end of the world to the [597b1] other; they fly against the wind. The story told about the stone is untrue: to wit, that the bird, so the story goes, carries a stone by way of ballast, and that the stone when vomited up is a touchstone for gold.
The cushat and the rock-dove migrate, and never winter in our country, as is [5] the case also with the swallow and the turtle-dove; the common pigeon, however, stays behind. The quail also migrates; only a few quails and turtle-doves may stay behind in sunny districts. Cushats and turtle-doves flock together, both when they arrive and when the season for migration comes round again. When quails come to [10] land, if it be fair weather or if a north wind is blowing, they will pair off and manage pretty comfortably; but if a southerly wind prevail they are greatly distressed owing to the difficulties in the way of flight, for a southerly wind is wet and violent. For this reason bird-catchers trap them in southerly winds but not during fine weather. They fly badly because of their weight; for their body is heavy, and that is why the [15] bird always screams while flying—for the labour is severe. When the quails come from abroad they have no leaders, but when they migrate hence, the glottis flits along with them, as does also the landrail, and the eared owl, and the corncrake. The corncrake calls them in the night, and when the bird-catchers hear the croak of [20] the bird in the night-time they know that the quails are on the move. The landrail is like a marsh bird, and the glottis has a tongue that can project far out of its beak. [The eared owl is like an ordinary owl, only that it has feathers about its ears; by some it is called the night-raven. It is a rogue and a mimic: while it apes the dance of [25] the hunter, his accomplice comes behind and catches it. The common owl is caught by a similar trick.