Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten BooksAristotle
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books
Aristotle
Zoology -- Pre-Linnaean works
3. The sepia also deposits eggs, which resemble large, black, myrtle
seeds. They are united together like a bunch of fruit, and are enclosed
in a substance which prevents them from separating readily. The male
emits his ink upon them, a mucous fluid, which causes their slippery
appearance. The ova increase in this way; and when first produced they
are white, but when they have touched the ink they become large and
black. When the young sepia, which is entirely formed of the internal
white of the ovum, is produced, it makes its way out by the rupture of
the membrane of the ovum.
4. The ovum which the female first produces is like hail, and to this
the young sepia is attached by the head, as birds are attached to
the abdomen. The nature of the umbilical attachment has never been
observed, except that as the sepia increases the white always becomes
less, and at last entirely disappears, like the yolk of the eggs of
birds.
5. The eyes are at first very large in these as in other animals, as in
the diagram. The ovum is seen at A, the eyes at B and C, and the embryo
sepia itself at D. The female contains ova during the spring. The ova
are produced in fifteen days; and when the ova are produced they remain
for fifteen days longer like the small seeds of grapes, and when these
are ruptured the young sepias escape from the inside. If a person
divides them before they have reached maturity, the young sepias emit
their fœces and vary in colour, and turn from white to red from alarm.
6. The crustaceans incubate upon their ova, which are placed beneath
them; but the polypus and sepia and such like incubate upon their ova
wherever they may be deposited, and especially the sepia, for the
female has often been observed with her abdomen upon the ground, but
the female polypus has been observed sometimes placed upon her ova,
and sometimes upon her mouth, holding with her tentacula over the hole
in which the ova were deposited. The sepia deposits her ova upon the
ground among fuci and reeds, or upon any thing thrown in the water,
as wood, branches, or stones; and the fishermen are careful to place
branches of trees in the water. Upon these they deposit their long and
united ova like branches of fruit.
7. The ova are deposited and produced by repeated exertion, as if the
parturition were accompanied with pain. The teuthis oviposits in the
sea. The ova, like those of the sepia, are united together. Both the
teuthus and sepia are short-lived, for very few of them survive a year.
The same is the case with the polypus. Each egg produces one small
sepia, and so also in the teuthis. The male teuthus differs from the
female; for if the hair (branchia) are drawn aside, the female will be
seen to have two red substances like mammæ, which the male does not
possess. The sepia also has the same sexual distinction, and is more
variegated than the female, as I observed before.
CHAPTER XVII.
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