previous next

CHAP. 88.—PROGNOSTICS DERIVED FROM QUADRUPEDS.

Nor, indeed, is it surprising that the aquatic birds, or any birds, in fact, should have a perception of the impending changes of the atmosphere. Sheep, however, when they skip and frisk with their clumsy gambols,1 afford us similar prognostics; oxen, when they snuff upwards towards the sky, and lick2 themselves against the hair; unclean swine, when they tear to pieces the trusses of hay that are put for other animals;3 bees, when, contrary to their natural habits of industry, they keep close within the hive; ants, when they hurry to and fro, or are seen carrying forth their eggs; and earthworms,4 emerging from their holes—all these indicate approaching changes in the weather.

1 Indecorâ lasciviâ.

2 Fée suggests that they probably do this to diminish the electric fluid with which the air is charged.

3 Alienos sibi manipulos.

4 This is confirmed by common experience.

Creative Commons License
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.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (4 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (1):
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (3):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: