Aristotle's History of Animals / In Ten Books

by Aristotle

Chapter VIII.

1. All animals have their proper season and age for coition; the nature of most creatures requires them to have intercourse with each other when winter is turning into summer. This is the spring season, in which all animals with wings, feet, or fins, are incited to coition. Some copulate and produce their young in the autumn and winter, as some aquatic and winged creatures. Mankind are ready at all seasons, and so are many other animals which associate with man; this arises from greater warmth, and better food, and is usual among those which are pregnant only for a short time, as the hog, dog, and those birds which have frequent broods. Many animals appear to adapt the season of coition to that which they consider the best for the nurture of their young.

2. Among mankind the male is more disposed for sexual intercourse in the winter, and the female in the summer. Birds, as I have observed, generally pair in the spring and summer, except the halcyon. This bird hatches its young about the time of the winter solstice. Whereupon fine days occurring at this season are called halcyon days, seven before the solstice and seven after it. As Simonides also writes in his poems, "as when in the winter months Jupiter prepares fourteen days, which mortals call the windless season, the sacred nurse of the variegated halcyon."

3. These fine days take place wherever it happens that the solstice turns to the south, when the pleiades set in the north. The bird is said to occupy seven days in building its nest, and the other seven in bringing out and nursing its young. The halcyon days are not always met with in this country at the time of the solstice, but they always occur in the Sicilian Sea. The halcyon produces five eggs.

4. The æthuia and the larus hatch their young among the rocks on the sea-side, and produce two or three, the larus during the summer, and the æthuia at the beginning of the spring, immediately after the equinox; it sets upon its eggs like other birds; neither of these kinds conceal themselves. The halcyon is the rarest of all, for it is only seen at the season of the setting of the pleiades, and at the solstice, and it first appears at seaports, flying as much as round a ship, and immediately vanishing away. Stesichorus also speaks of it in the same manner.

5. The nightingale produces her young at the beginning of summer. She produces five or six eggs. She conceals herself from the autumn to the beginning of spring. Insects copulate and produce their young during the winter whenever the days are fine, and the wind in the south, at least such of them as do not conceal themselves, as the fly and ant. Wild animals produce their young once a year, unless, like the hare, they breed while they are nursing their young.

Chapter IX.

1. Fish also generally breed once a year, as the chyti. All those which are caught in a net are called chyti; the thynnus, palamis, cestreus, chalais, colias, chromis, psetta, and such like, the labrax is an exception, for this alone of them all breeds twice a year, and the second fry of these are much weaker. The trichias[161] and rock fish breed twice, the trigla is the only one that breeds three times a year. This is shewn by the fry, which appear three times at certain places.

2. The scorpius breeds twice, and so does the sargus, in spring and autumn, the salpa once only in the spring. The thynnis breeds once, but as some of the fry are produced at first, and others afterwards, it appears to breed twice. The first fry makes its appearance in the month of December, after the solstice, the second in the spring. The male thynnis is different from the female, for the female has a fin under the abdomen, called aphareus, which the male has not.

3. Among the selachea, the rhine alone breeds twice in the year; at the beginning of the autumn, and at the period of the setting of the Pleiades. The young are, however, better in the autumn. At each breeding season it produces seven or eight. Some of the galei, as the asterias, seem to produce their ova twice every month. This arises from all the ova not being perfected at once.