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But these things, though wonderful, are not so much
to be admired as are those beasts that understand the use
of numbers and have the power of reckoning, like the
oxen about Susa. For there are oxen in that place that
water the king's gardens with portable buckets, of which
the number is fixed. For every ox carries a hundred
buckets every day, and more you cannot force them to
take or carry, would you never so fain; insomuch that,
when constraint has been used for experiment's sake,
nothing could make them stir after they had carried their
full number. Such an accurate account do they take, and
preserve the same in their memory, as Ctesias the Cnidian
relates it.
The Libyans deride the Egyptians for the fables which
they report of the oryx, which, as they say, makes a great
noise upon the same day, at the very hour, when the Dogstar, which they call Sothes, rises. However, this is certain, that all their goats, when that star rises truly with
the sun, turn themselves and stand gazing toward the
east; which is a most unquestionable argument of that
star's having finished its course, and agrees exactly with
the astronomer's observations.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 5.
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