animals

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

animals

Some animals are, at one and the same time, furnished with a mane
and furnished also with a pair of horns bent in towards one another,
as is the bison (or aurochs), which is found in Paeonia and Maedica.
But all animals that are horned are quadrupedal, except in cases where
a creature is said metaphorically, or by a figure of speech, to have
horns; just as the Egyptians describe the serpents found in the
neighbourhood of Thebes, while in point of fact the creatures have
merely protuberances on the head sufficiently large to suggest such an
epithet.