Aristotle THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

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128 pages - You are on Page 12

Furthermore, some animals have feet and some are destitute thereof. Of such as have feet some animals have two, as is the case with men and birds, and with men and birds only; some have four, as the lizard and the dog; some have more, as the centipede and the bee; but allsoever that have feet have an even number of them.

Of swimming creatures that are destitute of feet, some have winglets or fins, as fishes: and of these some have four fins, two above on the back, two below on the belly, as the gilthead and the basse; some have two only,-to wit, such as are exceedingly long and smooth, as the eel and the conger; some have none at all, as the muraena, but use the sea just as snakes use dry ground-and by the way, snakes swim in water in just the same way. Of the shark-kind some have no fins, such as those that are flat and long-tailed, as the ray and the sting-ray, but these fishes swim actually by the undulatory motion of their flat bodies; the fishing frog, however, has fins, and so likewise have all such fishes as have not their flat surfaces thinned off to a sharp edge.

Of those swimming creatures that appear to have feet, as is the case with the molluscs, these creatures swim by the aid of their feet and their fins as well, and they swim most rapidly backwards in the direction of the trunk, as is the case with the cuttle-fish or sepia and the calamary; and, by the way, neither of these latter can walk as the poulpe or octopus can.

The hard-skinned or crustaceous animals, like the crawfish, swim by the instrumentality of their tail-parts; and they swim most rapidly tail foremost, by the aid of the fins developed upon that member. The newt swims by means of its feet and tail; and its tail resembles that of the sheatfish, to compare little with great.

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