Episode 4

Of viviparous animals, some hatch eggs in their own interior, as creatures of the shark kind; others engender in their interior a live foetus, as man and the horse. When the result of conception is perfected, with some animals a living creature is brought forth, with others an egg is brought to light, with others a grub. Of the eggs, some have egg-shells and are of two different colours within, such as birds' eggs; others are soft-skinned and of uniform colour, as the eggs of animals of the shark kind. Of the grubs, some are from the first capable of movement, others are motionless. However, with regard to these phenomena we shall speak precisely hereafter when we come to treat of Generation.

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.

Of animals that can fly some are furnished with feathered wings, as the eagle and the hawk; some are furnished with membranous wings, as the bee and the cockchafer; others are furnished with leathern wings, as the flying fox and the bat. All flying creatures possessed of blood have feathered wings or leathern wings; the bloodless creatures have membranous wings, as insects. The creatures that have feathered wings or leathern wings have either two feet or no feet at all: for there are said to be certain flying serpents in Ethiopia that are destitute of feet.

Creatures that have feathered wings are classed as a genus under the name of 'bird'; the other two genera, the leathern-winged and membrane-winged, are as yet without a generic title.

Of creatures that can fly and are bloodless some are coleopterous or sheath-winged, for they have their wings in a sheath or shard, like the cockchafer and the dung-beetle; others are sheathless, and of these latter some are dipterous and some tetrapterous: tetrapterous, such as are comparatively large or have their stings in the tail, dipterous, such as are comparatively small or have their stings in front. The coleoptera are, without exception, devoid of stings; the diptera have the sting in front, as the fly, the horsefly, the gadfly, and the gnat.

Bloodless animals as a general rule are inferior in point of size to blooded animals; though, by the way, there are found in the sea some few bloodless creatures of abnormal size, as in the case of certain molluscs. And of these bloodless genera, those are the largest that dwell in milder climates, and those that inhabit the sea are larger than those living on dry land or in fresh water.

All creatures that are capable of motion move with four or more points of motion; the blooded animals with four only: as, for instance, man with two hands and two feet, birds with two wings and two feet, quadrupeds and fishes severally with four feet and four fins. Creatures that have two winglets or fins, or that have none at all like serpents, move all the same with not less than four points of motion; for there are four bends in their bodies as they move, or two bends together with their fins. Bloodless and many footed animals, whether furnished with wings or feet, move with more than four points of motion; as, for instance, the dayfly moves with four feet and four wings: and, I may observe in passing, this creature is exceptional not only in regard to the duration of its existence, whence it receives its name, but also because though a quadruped it has wings also.

All animals move alike, four-footed and many-footed; in other words, they all move cross-corner-wise. And animals in general have two feet in advance; the crab alone has four.

6Very extensive genera of animals, into which other subdivisions fall, are the following: one, of birds; one, of fishes; and another, of cetaceans. Now all these creatures are blooded.

There is another genus of the hard-shell kind, which is called oyster; another of the soft-shell kind, not as yet designated by a single term, such as the spiny crawfish and the various kinds of crabs and lobsters; and another of molluscs, as the two kinds of calamary and the cuttle-fish; that of insects is different. All these latter creatures are bloodless, and such of them as have feet have a goodly number of them; and of the insects some have wings as well as feet.