Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten BooksAristotle
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books
Aristotle
Zoology -- Pre-Linnaean works
8. For all sanguineous animals have either a bony, or a spinous
column. The remainder of the bones exist in some animals, but not in
others, for if they have the limbs, they have the bones belonging to
them; for those that have not hind and fore legs have not hams, nor
are they present in those animals which possess limbs unlike those of
quadrupeds, for in these they vary in size and proportion. This is the
nature of the bones of animals.
CHAPTER VIII.
1. Cartilage is of the same nature as bone, but it differs in the
greater and less, and neither bone nor cartilage are reproduced if they
are cut off. In sanguineous and viviparous animals living on the land
the cartilage is imperforate, and does not contain marrow, like the
bones; but the flat selachea, which have a cartilaginous spine, have
a cartilage analogous to bone containing a liquid marrow. Viviparous
animals, with feet, have cartilage about their ears, nostrils, and
extremities of their bones.
CHAPTER IX.
1. There is another class of parts, which, though not the same as
these, are not very different, as nails, hoofs, claws, and horns, and
besides these, the beak of birds which alone possess this part. For
these are both flexible and fissile. But bone is neither flexible nor
fissile, but brittle; and the colour of horns, nails, claws, and hoofs
follow the colour of the skin and the hair: for in black animals the
horns are black, and so are the claws and hoofs in those with claws; in
white animals they are white. There are also intermediate colours, the
nails also are of the same nature.
2. But the teeth are like bones; wherefore, in black men, Ethiopians,
and such like, the teeth and the bones are white, but the nails are
black, like the rest of the skin. The horns of most animals are hollow
at their base, and surround a bony process on their heads; but at the
extremity the horn is solid and single. The stag's horns are solid
throughout, and divided; and these animals alone cast their horns; this
is done annually, if they are not cut off. Concerning those that are
cut off, we shall speak hereafter.
3. The horns are more nearly allied to skin than to bone, so that in
Phrygia and elsewhere there are oxen which have the power of moving
their horns, as they do their ears; and of those which have nails
(and all that have toes have nails, and those that have feet have
toes, except the elephant, which has its toes undivided, and scarcely
distinguished, and no nails at all)--and of those with nails, some have
straight nails, like men, others crooked, as the lion among beasts, and
the eagle amongst birds.
CHAPTER X.
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