26. From the place aforesaid is seen continually between the south and the east a star of great size and ruddy splendour, which is called Canopus, and which from these parts of the world is never visible.
27. There are many marvellous things in the cycle of those [heavenly bodies] to delight a good astronomer.[139]
28. In this India, and in India the Less, men who dwell a long way from the sea, under the ground and in woody tracts, seem altogether infernal; neither eating, drinking, nor clothing themselves like the others who dwell by the sea.[140]
29. There serpents too be numerous, and very big, of all colours in the world; and it is a great marvel that they be seldom or never found to hurt anybody unless first attacked.
30. There is there also a certain kind of wasps, which make it their business to kill very big spiders whenever they find them, and afterwards to bury them in the sand, in a deep hole which they make, and so to cover them up that there is no man in the world who can turn them up, or find the place.[141]
31. There is also a kind of very small ants, white as wool, which have such hard teeth that they gnaw through even timbers and the joints of stones,[142] and, in short, whatever dry thing they find on the face of the earth, and mutilate woollen and cotton clothes. And they build out of the finest sand a crust like a wall, so that the sun cannot reach them, and so they remain covered. But if that crust happens to get broken, so that the sun reaches them, they incontinently die.[143]
32. As regards insects, there be wonders, so many, great, and marvellous, that they cannot be told.
33. There is also in this India a certain bird, big like a kite, having a white head and belly, but all red above, which boldly snatches fish out of the hands of fishermen and other people, and indeed [these birds] go on just like dogs.[144]