Slept all the night, where'er he laid his load,Nor do I so much admire at him who was the first that hit upon the way to open an oyster, when I meet with and consider the artifices of the herons. For a heron, when he has swallowed a closed oyster, endures the trouble and vexation of it for so long time, till he perceives it soften and relaxed by the heat of his stomach; then casting it up again gaping and divided, he takes out that which is fit for food.
With his right-handed weight upon the wood.
In general then, since the usual arguments by which
philosophers demonstrate that beasts partake of reason
are these following,—purpose, contrivance, memory, passions, care of their young ones, gratefulness to those from
whom they receive kindnesses, and the remembrance of
shrewd turns, to which we may add the search after and
choice of what is needful and beneficial for them, together
with apparent shows of virtue, as of fortitude, society,
continence, and magnanimity,—if we consider the marine
creatures, we shall not find that our strictest observation
can perceive in them any of these excellences, or at best
they are such obscure and imperfect glimmerings as are
scarce discernible. But in terrestrial and land animals,
there is not any man but may behold the most luculent, the
most evident and uncontrollable demonstrations in the world
of all that has been said. In the first place, observe the
designs and preparations of bulls provoked to combat, and
of wild boars whetting their teeth. Again, elephants—
since, by digging up or tearing down the trees which they
intend to feed upon, they blunt and wear out their tushes
—make use of only one for those purposes, but reserve
the other strong and sharp for their own defence. The
lion also always walks with his feet inverted, hiding his claws
withinside his paw, to prevent the hunter from tracing
him easily by his footing. For the track of a lion's claw
is not easily to be found, so that the hunters are frequently
at a loss, and wander after the obscure and scarce discernible footsteps of those beasts. You have heard also, I suppose,
[p. 174]
of the ichneumon, how that he arms himself as completely as a soldier with his breastplate and cuirass prepared for battle; in such a manner does that creature
surround and wrap himself about with a coat of mail,
when he attacks the crocodile.
Admirable are the preparations of swallows before they
go to lay their eggs, how they place the more solid stubble
for foundations, and upon that build up the slighter straws;
and if they perceive that the nest wants mud to serve as
glue, you may observe how they fly to the next lake or
sea, and after they have skimmed the superficies of the
water with their wings,—so as to make them moist, yet
not heavy with wet,—they lick up the dust, and so daub
and bind together the loose and ill-cohering parts of the
nest. As for the form of their architecture, it is composed
neither of angles nor of many sides, but smooth and, as
much as may be, spherical; for that such a figure is lasting and capacious, and not easily affording entrance to
creatures that lie in wait for their destruction from without.
Who is there that does not admire, for more reasons
than one, the labor of the spiders, which seems as pattern
for the threads that women spin and the nets that are used
in hunting? For the extraordinary fineness of the spinning, and the evenness of the thread, not discontinued or
snapped off like the yarn upon a quill, but having the
smooth and subtle texture of a thin membrane, and knit
and spun together with a certain clammy moisture imperceptibly mixed; besides the tincture of it, causing a kind
of airy and misty color, the better to deceive; but above
all, the conduct and governing of this little engine, in
which when any thing happens to be entangled, you see
how presently, like an expert huntsman, the subtle artist
contracts her net and binds her prey within it;—all this,
being every day obvious to our sight and contemplation,
[p. 175]
gives credit to my discourse, which otherwise might be
accounted no less fabulous than what is reported of certain
Libyan crows, that, when they are a-thirsty, throw stones
into the water, by that means to raise it to such a height
that they may be able to reach it with their bills. Then
again, when I saw a ship dog, in the absence of the seamen, putting in stones in a half-empty jar of oil, it was to
me a wonder how that dog should understand that the
pressure of the heavier weight would make the lighter rise.
And the same artifices are reported of Cretan bees and
Cilician geese. For the first of these, being to take their
flight about some windy promontory, ballast themselves
with little stones, to prevent their being carried away by
the stronger blasts. And as for the geese, they being
afraid of the eagles, every time they cross the mountain
Taurus, carry great stones in their mouths, to the end that
by that means (as it were) bridling their gaggling tongues,
they may cross the mountain in silence, without alarming
their enemies.
Extraordinary also is the caution which the cranes observe in their flight. For they fly, when the wind is very
high and the air very tempestuous, not as in fair weather,
all afront or in manner of the half-moon; but forming a
triangular body, with the sharp angle of that figure they
penetrate the wind that ruffles round about them, and by
that means preserve their order unbroken. On the other
side, when they fill upon the ground, those that are upon
the night-watch stand with the whole weight of their
bodies upon one leg, holding a stone in the claw of the
other foot. For the holding of the stone keeps them
awake for a long time together, and wakes them again
with the noise of the fall if they happen to drop asleep.
So that it was no wonder that Hercules laid his quiver
under his arm-pit, and with his strenuous arm embracing
his bow,
[p. 176]
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.