Aristotle, Second Part of THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

II: 128 pages - You are on Page 115

Part 7

Cattle feed on corn and grass, and fatten on vegetables that tend to cause flatulency, such as bitter vetch or bruised beans or bean-stalks. The older ones also will fatten if they be fed up after an incision has been made into their hide, and air blown thereinto. Cattle will fatten also on barley in its natural state or on barley finely winnowed, or on sweet food, such as figs, or pulp from the wine-press, or on elm-leaves. But nothing is so fattening as the heat of the sun and wallowing in warm waters. If the horns of young cattle be smeared with hot wax, you may mold them to any shape you please, and cattle are less subject to disease of the hoof if you smear the horny parts with wax, pitch, or olive oil. Herded cattle suffer more when they are forced to change their pasture ground by frost than when snow is the cause of change. Cattle grow all the more in size when they are kept from sexual commerce over a number of years; and it is with a view to growth in size that in Epirus the so-called Pyrrhic kine are not allowed intercourse with the bull until they are nine years old; from which circumstance they are nicknamed the 'unbulled' kine. Of these Pyrrhic cattle, by the way, they say that there are only about four hundred in the world, that they are the private property of the Epirote royal family, that they cannot thrive out of Epirus, and that people elsewhere have tried to rear them, but without success.

Part 8

Horses, mules, and asses feed on corn and grass, but are fattened chiefly by drink. Just in proportion as beasts of burden drink water, so will they more or less enjoy their food, and a place will give good or bad feeding according as the water is good or bad. Green corn, while ripening, will give a smooth coat; but such corn is injurious if the spikes are too stiff and sharp. The first crop of clover is unwholesome, and so is clover over which ill-scented water runs; for the clover is sure to get the taint of the water. Cattle like clear water for drinking; but the horse in this respect resembles the camel, for the camel likes turbid and thick water, and will never drink from a stream until he has trampled it into a turbid condition. And, by the way, the camel can go without water for as much as four days, but after that when he drinks, he drinks in immense quantities.

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