Of water animals

the genus of fishes constitutes a single group
apart from the rest, and including many diverse forms.

In the first place, the fish has a head, a back, a belly, in the
neighbourhood of which last are placed the stomach and viscera; and
behind it has a tail of continuous, undivided shape, but not, by the
way, in all cases alike. No fish has a neck, or any limb, or testicles
at all, within or without, or breasts. But, by the way this absence of
breasts may predicated of all non-viviparous animals; and in point
of fact viviparous animals are not in all cases provided with the
organ, excepting such as are directly viviparous without being first
oviparous. Thus the dolphin is directly viviparous, and accordingly we
find it furnished with two breasts, not situated high up, but in the
neighbourhood of the genitals. And this creature is not provided, like
quadrupeds, with visible teats, but has two vents, one on each
flank, from which the milk flows; and its young have to follow after
it to get suckled, and this phenomenon has been actually witnessed.

Some species

of birds are furnished additionally with spurs,
but no bird with crooked talons is found so provided. The birds with
talons are among those that fly well, but those that have spurs are
among the heavy-bodied.

Again, some birds have a crest. As a general rule the crest sticks
up, and is composed of feathers only; but the crest of the barn-door
cock is exceptional in kind, for, whereas it is not just exactly
flesh, at the same time it is not easy to say what else it is.

for they all without

exception close the eye with the lower lid, but they do not blink like
birds. Further, birds have neither scutes nor hair, but feathers;
and the feathers are invariably furnished with quills. They have no
tail, but a rump with tail-feathers, short in such as are
long-legged and web-footed, large in others. These latter kinds of
birds fly with their feet tucked up close to the belly; but the
small rumped or short-tailed birds fly with their legs stretched out
at full length. All are furnished with a tongue, but the organ is
variable, being long in some birds and broad in others. Certain
species of birds above all other animals, and next after man,
possess the faculty of uttering articulate sounds; and this faculty is
chiefly developed in broad-tongued birds. No oviparous creature has an
epiglottis over the windpipe, but these animals so manage the
opening and shutting of the windpipe as not to allow any solid
substance to get down into the lung.

Birds

are furnished with a mouth, but with an exceptional one,
for they have neither lips nor teeth, but a beak. Neither have they
ears nor a nose, but only passages for the sensations connected with
these organs: that for the nostrils in the beak, and that for
hearing in the head. Like all other animals they all have two eyes,
and these are devoid of lashes. The heavy-bodied (or gallinaceous)
birds close the eye by means of the lower lid, and all birds blink
by means of a skin extending over the eye from the inner corner; the
owl and its congeners also close the eye by means of the upper lid.
The same phenomenon is observable in the animals that are protected by
horny scutes, as in the lizard and its congeners;

This latter bird is somewhat bigger than the chaffinch, and is
mottled in appearance. It is peculiar in the arrangement of its
toes, and resembles the snake in the structure of its tongue; for
the creature can protrude its tongue to the extent of four
finger-breadths, and then draw it back again. Moreover, it can twist
its head backwards while keeping all the rest of its body still,
like the serpent. It has big claws, somewhat resembling those of the
woodpecker. Its note is a shrill chirp.

Birds

also in some parts resemble the above mentioned animals;
that is to say, they have in all cases a head, a neck, a back, a
belly, and what is analogous to the chest. The bird is remarkable
among animals as having two feet, like man; only, by the way, it bends
them backwards as quadrupeds bend their hind legs, as was noticed
previously. It has neither hands nor front feet, but wings-an
exceptional structure as compared with other animals. Its
haunch-bone is long, like a thigh, and is attached to the body as
far as the middle of the belly; so like to a thigh is it that when
viewed separately it looks like a real one, while the real thigh is
a separate structure betwixt it and the shin. Of all birds those
that have crooked talons have the biggest thighs and the strongest
breasts. All birds are furnished with many claws, and all have the
toes separated more or less asunder; that is to say, in the greater
part the toes are clearly distinct from one another, for even the
swimming birds, although they are web-footed, have still their claws
fully articulated and distinctly differentiated from one another.
Birds that fly high in air are in all cases four-toed: that is, the
greater part have three toes in front and one behind in place of a
heel; some few have two in front and two behind, as the wryneck.

After being cut

open along its entire length it continues to breathe for a
considerable time; a very slight motion goes on in the region of the
heart, and, while contraction is especially manifested in the
neighbourhood of the ribs, a similar motion is more or less
discernible over the whole body. It has no spleen visible. It
hibernates, like the lizard.

This change of colour takes place over the whole body alike, for
the eyes and the tail come alike under its influence. In its movements
it is very sluggish, like the tortoise. It assumes a greenish hue in
dying, and retains this hue after death. It resembles the lizard in
the position of the oesophagus and the windpipe. It has no flesh
anywhere except a few scraps of flesh on the head and on the jaws
and near to the root of the tail. It has blood only round about the
heart, the eyes, the region above the heart, and in all the veins
extending from these parts; and in all these there is but little blood
after all. The brain is situated a little above the eyes, but
connected with them. When the outer skin is drawn aside from off the
eye, a something is found surrounding the eye, that gleams through
like a thin ring of copper. Membranes extend well nigh over its entire
frame, numerous and strong, and surpassing in respect of number and
relative strength those found in any other animal.