Page - 998 - in The Complete Aristotle

These creatures are all saw-toothed. Their ribs are as numerous as the days of the month; in other words, they are thirty in number. Some affirm that the same phenomenon is observable with serpents as with swallow chicks; in other words, they say that if you prick out a serpent’s eyes they will grow again. And further, the tails of saurians and of serpents, if they be cut off, will grow again. With fishes the properties of the gut and stomach are similar; that is, they have a stomach single and simple, but variable in shape according to species. For in some cases the stomach is gut-shaped, as with the scarus, or parrot- fish; which fish, by the way, appears to be the only fish that chews the cud. And the whole length of the gut is simple, and if it have a reduplication or kink it loosens out again into a simple form. An exceptional property in fishes and in birds for the most part is the being furnished with gut-appendages or caeca. Birds have them low down and few in number. Fishes have them high up about the stomach, and sometimes numerous, as in the goby, the galeos, the perch, the scorpaena, the citharus, the red mullet, and the sparus; the cestreus or grey mullet has several of them on one side of the belly, and on the other side only one. Some fish possess these appendages but only in small numbers, as the hepatus and the glaucus; and, by the way, they are few also in the dorado. These fishes differ also from one another within the same species, for in the dorado one individual has many and another few. Some fishes are entirely without the part, as the majority of the selachians. As for all the rest, some of them have a few and some a great many. And in all cases where the gut-appendages are found in fish, they are found close up to the stomach. In regard to their internal parts birds differ from other animals and from one another. Some birds, for instance, have a crop in front of the stomach, as the barn-door cock, the cushat, the pigeon, and the partridge; and the crop consists of a large hollow skin, into which the food first enters and where it lies ingested. Just where the crop leaves the oesophagus it is somewhat narrow; by and by it broadens out, but where it communicates with the stomach it narrows down again. The stomach (or gizzard) in most birds is fleshy and hard, and inside is a strong skin which comes away from the fleshy part. Other birds have no crop, but instead of it an oesophagus wide and roomy, either all the way or in the part leading to the stomach, as with the daw, the raven, and the carrion-crow. The quail also has the oesophagus widened out at the lower extremity, and in the aegocephalus and the owl the organ is slightly broader at the bottom than at the top. The duck, the goose, the gull, the catarrhactes, and the great bustard have the oesophagus wide and roomy from one end to the other, and the same applies to a great many other 998