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 116

Part 9

The elephant at the most can eat nine Macedonian medimni of fodder at one meal; but so large an amount is unwholesome. As a general rule it can take six or seven medimni of fodder, five medimni of wheat, and five mareis of wine-six cotylae going to the maris. An elephant has been known to drink right off fourteen Macedonian metretae of water, and another metretae later in the day.

Camels live for about thirty years; in some exceptional cases they live much longer, and instances have been known of their living to the age of a hundred. The elephant is said by some to live for about two hundred years; by others, for three hundred.

Part 10

Sheep and goats are graminivorous, but sheep browse assiduously and steadily, whereas goats shift their ground rapidly, and browse only on the tips of the herbage. Sheep are much improved in condition by drinking, and accordingly they give the flocks salt every five days in summer, to the extent of one medimnus to the hundred sheep, and this is found to render a flock healthier and fatter. In fact they mix salt with the greater part of their food; a large amount of salt is mixed into their bran (for the reason that they drink more when thirsty), and in autumn they get cucumbers with a sprinkling of salt on them; this admixture of salt in their food tends also to increase the quantity of milk in the ewes. If sheep be kept on the move at midday they will drink more copiously towards evening; and if the ewes be fed with salted food as the lambing season draws near they will get larger udders. Sheep are fattened by twigs of the olive or of the oleaster, by vetch, and bran of every kind; and these articles of food fatten all the more if they be first sprinkled with brine. Sheep will take on flesh all the better if they be first put for three days through a process of starving. In autumn, water from the north is more wholesome for sheep than water from the south. Pasture grounds are all the better if they have a westerly aspect.

Sheep will lose flesh if they be kept overmuch on the move or be subjected to any hardship. In winter time shepherds can easily distinguish the vigorous sheep from the weakly, from the fact that the vigorous sheep are covered with hoar-frost while the weakly ones are quite free of it; the fact being that the weakly ones feeling oppressed with the burden shake themselves and so get rid of it. The flesh of all quadrupeds deteriorates in marshy pastures, and is the better on high grounds. Sheep that have flat tails can stand the winter better than long-tailed sheep, and short-fleeced sheep than the shaggy-fleeced; and sheep with crisp wool stand the rigour of winter very poorly. Sheep are healthier than goats, but goats are stronger than sheep. (The fleeces and the wool of sheep that have been killed by wolves, as also the clothes made from them, are exceptionally infested with lice.)

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