1. Asses only suffer from one disease, which is called melis, which first attacks the head of the animal, and causes a thick and bloody phlegm to flow from the nostrils. If the disease extends to the lungs, it is fatal; but that which first attacks the head is not so. This animal cannot bear cold, for which reason there are no asses in the vicinity of the Pontus and in Scythia. CHAPTER XXV. 1. Elephants suffer from flatulent diseases, for which reason they can neither evacuate their fluid or solid excrements. If they eat earth they become weak, unless used to such food. If it is accustomed to it, it does no harm. Sometimes the elephant swallows stones. It also suffers from diarrhœa. When attacked with this complaint, they are cured by giving them warm water to drink, and hay dipped in honey to eat; and either of these remedies will stop the disease. When fatigued for want of sleep, they are cured by being rubbed on the shoulders with salt and oil, and warm water. When they suffer from pain in the shoulders, they are relieved by the application of roasted swine's flesh. Some elephants will drink oil, and some will not; and if any iron weapon is struck into their body, the oil which they drink assists in its expulsion; and to those which will not drink it, they give wine of rice cooked with oil. This, then, is the nature of quadrupeds. CHAPTER XXVI. 1. Insects generally thrive when the year is of the same kind as the season in which they were born, such as the spring, moist and warm. Certain creatures are produced in beehives, which destroy the combs, and a little spinning worm, which destroys the wax. It is called clerus, or by some persons pyraustes. This creature produces a spider-like animal like itself, which causes sickness in the hive, and another creature like the moth, which flies round the candle. This produces a creature filled with a woolly substance. It is not killed by the bees, and is only driven out by smoking it. A kind of caterpillar also, which is called teredo, is produced in the hives. The bees do not drive it away. They suffer most from diseases when the woods produce flowers infected with rust, and in dry seasons. All insects die when plunged in oil, and most rapidly if their head is oiled, and they are placed in the sun. CHAPTER XXVII. 1. Animals also differ in their localities: for some are entirely absent from some localities which exist in others, though small and shortlived, and not thriving. And frequently there will be a great difference even in adjoining places, as the grasshopper is found in some parts of Milesia, and is absent from those in the immediate vicinity. And in Cephalenia a river divides the country, on one side of which the grasshopper is found, and not on the other.