[1172] III, 34.
[1173] V, 17.
[1174] I, 22.
[1175] NH, VIII, 17; Hist. Anim., VI, 31.
[1176] VI, 37.
[1177] The ancient authorities, pro and con, will be found listed in D. W. Thompson, Glossary of Greek Birds, 106-107. He adds: “Modern naturalists accept the story of the singing swans, asserting that though the common swan cannot sing, yet the Whooper or whistling swan does so. It is certain that the Whooper sings, for many ornithologists state the fact, but I do not think that it can sing very well; at the very best, dant sonitum rauci per stagna loquacia cygni. This concrete explanation is quite inadequate; it is beyond a doubt that the swan’s song (like the halcyon’s) veiled, and still hides, some mystical allusion.”
[1178] II, 14.
[1179] I, 22. Pliny, NH, VIII, 17, repeats a slightly different popular notion that the lioness tears her womb with her claws and so can bear but once; against this view he cites Aristotle’s statement that the lioness bears five times, as described above.
[1180] III, 2.
[1181] III, 47; VI, 25. Scylax was a Persian admiral under Darius who traveled to India and wrote an account of his voyages. The work extant under his name is of doubtful authorship (Isaac Vossius, Periplus Scylacis Caryandensis, 1639), but some date it as early as the fourth century B.C.