ported that panthers, which in barbarous countries are taken with poisoned flesh, have a certain remedy[1] that preserves them from dying; and that in Crete, the wild goats, when they are wounded with poisoned arrows, seek for an herb called dittany, which, when they have tasted, the arrows (they say) drop from their bodies. It is said also that deer, before they fawn, purge themselves with a little herb called hartswort.[2] Beasts, when they receive any hurt, or fear it, have recourse to their natural arms: the bull to his horns, the boar to his tusks, and the lion to his teeth. Some take to flight, others hide themselves; the cuttle-fish vomits[3] blood; the cramp-fish benumbs; and there are many animals that, by their intolerable stink, oblige their pursuers to retire.
LI. But that the beauty of the world might be eternal, great care has been taken by the providence of the Gods to perpetuate the different kinds of animals, and vegetables, and trees, and all those things which sink deep into the earth, and are contained in it by their roots and trunks; in order to which every individual has within itself such fertile seed that many are generated from one; and in vegetables this seed is enclosed in the heart of their fruit, but in such abundance that men may plentifully feed on it, and the earth be always replanted.
With regard to animals, do we not see how aptly they are formed for the propagation of their species? Nature for this end created some males and some females. Their parts are perfectly framed for generation, and they have a wonderful propensity to copulation. When the seed has fallen on the matrix, it draws almost all the nourishment to itself, by which the fœtus is formed; but as soon as it is discharged from thence, if it is an animal that is nourished by milk, almost all the food of the mother turns into milk, and the animal, without any direction but by the pure instinct of nature, immediately hunts for the
- ↑ Balbus does not tell us the remedy which the panther makes use of; but Pliny is not quite so delicate: he says, excrementis hominis sibi medetur.
- ↑ Aristotle says they purge themselves with this herb after they fawn. Pliny says both before and after.
- ↑ The cuttle-fish has a bag at its neck, the black blood of which the Romans used for ink. It was called atramentum.
