Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten BooksAristotle
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books
Aristotle
Zoology -- Pre-Linnaean works
2. In Poroselene a road divides the country, on one side of which the
weasel is found, and not on the other. In Bœotia there are many moles
in the neighbourhood of Orchomenus, but in the adjoining Lebadian
district there are none, nor if they are imported, are they willing
to burrow. If hares are taken into Ithaca they will not live, but are
seen dead on the sea coast, turned in the direction in which they were
brought. In Sicily the hippomyrmex is not found, and in Cyrene there
were formerly no croaking frogs.
3. In all Libya there is neither wild boar, nor stag, nor wild goat.
And in India, Ctesias, who is not worthy of credit, says, there are
neither domestic nor wild swine; but the exsanguineous and burrowing
tribes are all large. In the Pontus there are no malacia, nor all the
kinds of testacea, except in a few places; but in the Red Sea all the
testacea are of a great size. In Syria there are sheep with tails a
cubit in width, and the ears of the goats are a span and four fingers,
and some of them bring their ears down to the ground: and the oxen,
like the camels, have a mane upon the point of the shoulder. In Lycia
the goats are shorn as the sheep are in other places.
4. In Libya the horned rams are born at once with horns, and not the
males only, as Homer says, but all the rest also. In the part of
Scythia near the Pontus, the contrary is the case, for they are born
without horns. And in Egypt some of the cattle, as the oxen and sheep,
are larger than in Greece, and others are smaller, as the dogs, wolves,
hares, foxes, ravens, and hawks. Others are nearly of the same size,
as the crows and goats. This difference originates in the food which
is abundant for some, and scarce for others. For the wolves, hawks,
and carnivorous creatures food is scarce, for there are but few small
birds. For the dasypus and others which are not carnivorous, neither
the hard nor soft fruits are of any long continuance.
5. The temperature is also very influential; for in Illyria, Thrace,
and Epirus, the asses are small. In Scythia, and Celtic countries,
they do not occur at all, for in these places the winter is severe. In
Arabia the lizards are more than a cubit long, and the mice are much
larger than those which inhabit our fields, their fore legs being a
span long, and their hind legs as long as from the first joint of the
finger....
6. In Libya, the serpents, as it has been already remarked, are very
large. For some persons say that as they sailed along the coast, they
saw the bones of many oxen, and that it was evident to them that they
had been devoured by the serpents. And as the ships passed on, the
serpents attacked the triremes, and some of them threw themselves upon
one of the triremes and overturned it. There are more lions in Europe,
and especially in the country between the Achelous and the Nessus. In
Asia there are leopards which are not found in Europe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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