Chapter XXVII.

1. Animals also differ in their localities: for some are entirely absent from some localities which exist in others, though small and shortlived, and not thriving. And frequently there will be a great difference even in adjoining places, as the grasshopper is found in some parts of Milesia, and is absent from those in the immediate vicinity. And in Cephalenia a river divides the country, on one side of which the grasshopper is found, and not on the other.

2. In Poroselene a road divides the country, on one side of which the weasel is found, and not on the other. In Bœotia there are many moles in the neighbourhood of Orchomenus, but in the adjoining Lebadian district there are none, nor if they are imported, are they willing to burrow. If hares are taken into Ithaca they will not live, but are seen dead on the sea coast, turned in the direction in which they were brought. In Sicily the hippomyrmex is not found, and in Cyrene there were formerly no croaking frogs.

3. In all Libya there is neither wild boar, nor stag, nor wild goat. And in India, Ctesias, who is not worthy of credit, says, there are neither domestic nor wild swine; but the exsanguineous and burrowing tribes are all large. In the Pontus there are no malacia, nor all the kinds of testacea, except in a few places; but in the Red Sea all the testacea are of a great size. In Syria there are sheep with tails a cubit in width, and the ears of the goats are a span and four fingers, and some of them bring their ears down to the ground: and the oxen, like the camels, have a mane upon the point of the shoulder. In Lycia the goats are shorn as the sheep are in other places.

4. In Libya the horned rams are born at once with horns, and not the males only, as Homer says, but all the rest also. In the part of Scythia near the Pontus, the contrary is the case, for they are born without horns. And in Egypt some of the cattle, as the oxen and sheep, are larger than in Greece, and others are smaller, as the dogs, wolves, hares, foxes, ravens, and hawks. Others are nearly of the same size, as the crows and goats. This difference originates in the food which is abundant for some, and scarce for others. For the wolves, hawks, and carnivorous creatures food is scarce, for there are but few small birds. For the dasypus and others which are not carnivorous, neither the hard nor soft fruits are of any long continuance.

5. The temperature is also very influential; for in Illyria, Thrace, and Epirus, the asses are small. In Scythia, and Celtic countries, they do not occur at all, for in these places the winter is severe. In Arabia the lizards are more than a cubit long, and the mice are much larger than those which inhabit our fields, their fore legs being a span long, and their hind legs as long as from the first joint of the finger....

6. In Libya, the serpents, as it has been already remarked, are very large. For some persons say that as they sailed along the coast, they saw the bones of many oxen, and that it was evident to them that they had been devoured by the serpents. And as the ships passed on, the serpents attacked the triremes, and some of them threw themselves upon one of the triremes and overturned it. There are more lions in Europe, and especially in the country between the Achelous and the Nessus. In Asia there are leopards which are not found in Europe.

7. On the whole, the wild animals of Asia are the fiercest, those of Europe the boldest, and those of Libya the most varied in form; and it has passed into a proverb that Libya is always producing something new. For the want of water brings many heterogeneous animals together at the drinking places, where they copulate and produce young, if their periods of gestation happen to be the same, and their size not very different. The desire of drinking makes them gentle to each other, for they differ from the animals of other countries, in wanting to drink more in winter than in summer; for on account of the great want of water during the summer they are habituated to do without water; and if the mice drink they die.

8. Other animals are produced by the intercourse of heterogeneous creatures, as in Cyrene the wolves copulate with the dogs, and produce young; and the Laconian dogs are bred between a dog and a fox. They say that the Indian dogs are derived from the tiger and the dog; not directly, but from the third mixture of the breeds; for they say that the first race was very fierce. They take the dogs and tie them up in the desert. Many of them are devoured, if the wild animal does not happen to desire sexual intercourse.