Seite - 1128 - in The Complete Aristotle

If, when drawn back from the jaw, the skin at once goes back to its place, the animal is young; if it remains long wrinkled up, the animal is old. < div id=“section127” class=“section” title=“26”> 26 The camel carries its young for ten months, and bears but one at a time and never more; the young camel is removed from the mother when a year old. The animal lives for a long period, more than fifty years. It bears in spring- time, and gives milk until the time of the next conception. Its flesh and milk are exceptionally palatable. The milk is drunk mixed with water in the proportion of either two to one or three to one. < div id=“section128” class=“section” title=“27”> 27 The elephant of either sex is fitted for breeding before reaching the age of twenty. The female carries her young, according to some accounts, for two and a half years; according to others, for three years; and the discrepancy in the assigned periods is due to the fact that there are never human eyewitnesses to the commerce between the sexes. The female settles down on its rear to cast its young, and obviously suffers greatly during the process. The young one, immediately after birth, sucks the mother, not with its trunk but with the mouth; and can walk about and see distinctly the moment it is born. < div id=“section129” class=“section” title=“28”> 28 The wild sow submits to the boar at the beginning of winter, and in the spring-time retreats for parturition to a lair in some district inaccessible to intrusion, hemmed in with sheer cliffs and chasms and overshadowed by trees. The boar usually remains by the sow for thirty days. The number of the litter and the period gestation is the same as in the case of the domesticated congener. The sound of the grunt also is similar; only that the sow grunts continually, and the boar but seldom. Of the wild boars such as are castrated 1128