The part around the pupil of the eye is fatty in all animals,
and this part resembles suet in all animals that possess such a part
and that are not furnished with hard eyes.

Fat animals, whether male or female, are more or less unfitted for
breeding purposes. Animals are disposed to take on fat more when old
than when young, and especially when they have attained their full
breadth and their full length and are beginning to grow depthways.

The brains of animals supplied with fat are oily, as in the pig;
of animals supplied with suet, parched and dry. But it is about the
kidneys more than any other viscera that animals are inclined to
take on fat; and the right kidney is always less supplied with fat
than the left kidney, and, be the two kidneys ever so fat, there is
always a space devoid of fat in between the two. Animals supplied with
suet are specially apt to have it about the kidneys, and especially
the sheep; for this animal is apt to die from its kidneys being
entirely enveloped. Fat or suet about the kidney is superinduced by
overfeeding, as is found at Leontini in Sicily; and consequently in
this district they defer driving out sheep to pasture until the day is
well on, with the view of limiting their food by curtailment of the
hours of pasture.

Of the viscera the liver in some animals becomes fatty, as,
among fishes, is the case with the selachia, by the melting of whose
livers an oil is manufactured. These cartilaginous fish themselves
have no free fat at all in connexion with the flesh or with the
stomach. The suet in fish is fatty, and does not solidify or
congeal. All animals are furnished with fat, either intermingled
with their flesh, or apart. Such as have no free or separate fat are
less fat than others in stomach and omentum, as the eel; for it has
only a scanty supply of suet about the omentum. Most animals take on
fat in the belly, especially such animals as are little in motion.

Again, fat and suet differ from one another. Suet is frangible
in all directions and congeals if subjected to extreme cold, whereas
fat can melt but cannot freeze or congeal; and soups made of the flesh
of animals supplied with fat do not congeal or coagulate, as is
found with horse-flesh and pork; but soups made from the flesh of
animals supplied with suet do coagulate, as is seen with mutton and
goat's flesh. Further, fat and suet differ as to their localities: for
fat is found between the skin and flesh, but suet is found only at the
limit of the fleshy parts. Also, in animals supplied with fat the
omentum or caul is supplied with fat, and it is supplied with suet
in animals supplied with suet. Moreover, ambidental animals are
supplied with fat, and non-ambidentals with suet.

Flesh can be divided asunder in any direction, not lengthwise only
as is the case with sinew and vein. When animals are subjected to
emaciation the flesh disappears, and the creatures become a mass of
veins and fibres; when they are over fed, fat takes the place of
flesh. Where the flesh is abundant in an animal, its veins are
somewhat small and the blood abnormally red; the viscera also and
the stomach are diminutive; whereas with animals whose veins are large
the blood is somewhat black, the viscera and the stomach are large,
and the flesh is somewhat scanty. And animals with small stomachs
are disposed to take on flesh.

Flesh, and that which is by nature akin to it in sanguineous
animals, is in all cases situated in between the skin and the bone, or
the substance analogous to bone; for just as spine is a counterpart of
bone, so is the flesh-like substance of animals that are constructed a
spinous system the counterpart of the flesh of animals constructed
on an osseous one.

The bladder also is of the nature of membrane, but of membrane
peculiar in kind, for it is extensile. The organ is not common to
all animals, but, while it is found in all the vivipara, the
tortoise is the only oviparous animal that is furnished therewithal.
The bladder, like ordinary membrane, if cut asunder will not grow
together again, unless the section be just at the commencement of
the urethra: except indeed in very rare cases, for instances of
healing have been known to occur. After death, the organ passes no
liquid excretion; but in life, in addition to the normal liquid
excretion, it passes at times dry excretion also, which turns into
stones in the case of sufferers from that malady. Indeed, instances
have been known of concretions in the bladder so shaped as closely
to resemble cockleshells.

Such are the properties, then, of vein, sinew and skin, of fibre
and membrane, of hair, nail, claw and hoof, of horns, of teeth, of
beak, of gristle, of bones, and of parts that are analogous to any
of the parts here enumerated.

If
membrane be bared and cut asunder it will not grow together again, and
the bone thus stripped of its membrane mortifies.


The omentum or caul, by the way, is membrane. All sanguineous
animals are furnished with this organ; but in some animals the organ
is supplied with fat, and in others it is devoid of it. The omentum
has both its starting-point and its attachment, with ambidental
vivipara, in the centre of the stomach, where the stomach has a kind
of suture; in non-ambidental vivipara it has its starting-point and
attachment in the chief of the ruminating stomachs.

In all sanguineous animals membranes are found. And membrane
resembles a thin close-textured skin, but its qualities are different,
as it admits neither of cleavage nor of extension. Membrane envelops
each one of the bones and each one of the viscera, both in the
larger and the smaller animals; though in the smaller animals the
membranes are indiscernible from their extreme tenuity and minuteness.
The largest of all the membranes are the two that surround the
brain, and of these two the one that lines the bony skull is
stronger and thicker than the one that envelops the brain; next in
order of magnitude comes the membrane that encloses the heart.

Hairs after being cut grow at the bottom but not at the top; if
feathers be cut off, they grow neither at top nor bottom, but shed and
fall out. Further, the bee's wing will not grow again after being
plucked off, nor will the wing of any creature that has undivided
wings. Neither will the sting grow again if the bee lose it, but the
creature will die of the loss.

The river Scamander also has the reputation of making
lambs yellow, and that is the reason, they say, why Homer designates
it the 'Yellow River.' Animals as a general rule have no hair on their
internal surfaces, and, in regard to their extremities, they have hair
on the upper, but not on the lower side.

The hare, or dasypod, is the only animal known to have hair inside
its mouth and underneath its feet. Further, the so-called mousewhale
instead of teeth has hairs in its mouth resembling pigs' bristles.

(Further, most birds change the colour of their plumage at different
seasons of the year, so much so that a man ignorant of their habits
might be mistaken as to their identity.) Some animals change the
colour of their hair with a change in their drinking-water, for in
some countries the same species of animal is found white in one
district and black in another. And in regard to the commerce of the
sexes, water in many places is of such peculiar quality that rams,
if they have intercourse with the female after drinking it, beget
black lambs, as is the case with the water of the Psychrus
(so-called from its coldness), a river in the district of Assyritis in
the Chalcidic Peninsula, on the coast of Thrace; and in Antandria
there are two rivers of which one makes the lambs white and the
other black.

With regard to winged animals, such as birds, no creature is
liable to change of colour by reason of age, excepting the crane.
The wings of this bird are ash-coloured at first, but as it grows
old the wings get black. Again, owing to special climatic
influences, as when unusual frost prevails, a change is sometimes
observed to take place in birds whose plumage is of one uniform
colour; thus, birds that have dusky or downright black plumage turn
white or grey, as the raven, the sparrow, and the swallow; but no case
has ever yet been known of a change of colour from white to black.

In the case of men of strong sexual passions the congenital
hairs shed the sooner, while the hairs of the after-growths are the
quicker to come. When men are afflicted with varicose veins they are
less inclined to take on baldness; and if they be bald when they
become thus afflicted, they have a tendency to get their hair again.

If a hair be cut, it does not grow at the point of section; but it
gets longer by growing upward from below. In fishes the scales grow
harder and thicker with age, and when the amimal gets emaciated or
is growing old the scales grow harder. In quadrupeds as they grow
old the hair in some and the wool in others gets deeper but scantier
in amount: and the hooves or claws get larger in size; and the same is
the case with the beaks of birds. The claws also increase in size,
as do also the nails.

Hairs if plucked out before maturity grow again; but they do not
grow again if plucked out afterwards. Every hair is supplied with a
mucous moisture at its root, and immediately after being plucked out
it can lift light articles if it touch them with this mucus.

Animals that admit of diversity of colour in the hair admit of a
similar diversity to start with in the skin and in the cuticle of
the tongue.

In some cases among men the upper lip and the chin is thickly
covered with hair, and in other cases these parts are smooth and the
cheeks are hairy; and, by the way, smooth-chinned men are less
inclined than bearded men to baldness.

The hair is inclined to grow in certain diseases, especially in
consumption, and in old age, and after death; and under these
circumstances the hair hardens concomitantly with its growth, and
the same duplicate phenomenon is observable in respect of the nails.

Hair as a rule grows more or less in length as the wearer grows in
age; chiefly the hair on the head, then that in the beard, and fine
hair grows longest of all. With some people as they grow old the
eyebrows grow thicker, to such an extent that they have to be cut off;
and this growth is owing to the fact that the eyebrows are situated at
a conjuncture of bones, and these bones, as age comes on, draw apart
and exude a gradual increase of moisture or rheum. The eyelashes do
not grow in size, but they shed when the wearer comes first under
the influence of sexual feelings, and shed all the quicker as this
influence is the more powerful; and these are the last hairs to grow
grey.

Women do not grow hairs on the chin; except that a scanty beard
grows on some women after the monthly courses have stopped; and
similar phenomenon is observed at times in priestesses in Caria, but
these cases are looked upon as portentous with regard to coming
events. The other after-growths are found in women, but more scanty
and sparse. Men and women are at times born constitutionally and
congenitally incapable of the after-growths; and individuals that
are destitute even of the growth upon the pubes are constitutionally
impotent.

Smoothness on the top of the head is termed 'baldness', but
smoothness on the eyebrows is denoted by a special term which means
'forehead-baldness'; and neither of these conditions of baldness
supervenes in a man until he shall have come under the influence of
sexual passion. For no boy ever gets bald, no woman, and no
castrated man. In fact, if a man be castrated before reaching puberty,
the later growths of hair never come at all; and, if the operation
take place subsequently, the aftergrowths, and these only, shed off;
or, rather, two of the growths shed off, but not that on the pubes.

Some hairs are congenital, others grow after the maturity of the
animal; but this occurs in man only. The congenital hairs are on the
head, the eyelids, and the eyebrows; of the later growths the hairs on
the pubes are the first to come, then those under the armpits, and,
thirdly, those on the chin; for, singularly enough, the regions
where congenital growths and the subsequent growths are found are
equal in number. The hair on the head grows scanty and sheds out to
a greater extent and sooner than all the rest. But this remark applies
only to hair in front; for no man ever gets bald at the back of his
head.