Page - 1019 - in The Complete Aristotle

baldness; and if they be bald when they become thus afflicted, they have a tendency to get their hair again. If a hair be cut, it does not grow at the point of section; but it gets longer by growing upward from below. In fishes the scales grow harder and thicker with age, and when the amimal gets emaciated or is growing old the scales grow harder. In quadrupeds as they grow old the hair in some and the wool in others gets deeper but scantier in amount: and the hooves or claws get larger in size; and the same is the case with the beaks of birds. The claws also increase in size, as do also the nails. < div id=“section46” class=“section” title=“12”> 12 With regard to winged animals, such as birds, no creature is liable to change of colour by reason of age, excepting the crane. The wings of this bird are ash-coloured at first, but as it grows old the wings get black. Again, owing to special climatic influences, as when unusual frost prevails, a change is sometimes observed to take place in birds whose plumage is of one uniform colour; thus, birds that have dusky or downright black plumage turn white or grey, as the raven, the sparrow, and the swallow; but no case has ever yet been known of a change of colour from white to black. (Further, most birds change the colour of their plumage at different seasons of the year, so much so that a man ignorant of their habits might be mistaken as to their identity.) Some animals change the colour of their hair with a change in their drinking-water, for in some countries the same species of animal is found white in one district and black in another. And in regard to the commerce of the sexes, water in many places is of such peculiar quality that rams, if they have intercourse with the female after drinking it, beget black lambs, as is the case with the water of the Psychrus (so-called from its coldness), a river in the district of Assyritis in the Chalcidic Peninsula, on the coast of Thrace; and in Antandria there are two rivers of which one makes the lambs white and the other black. The river Scamander also has the reputation of making lambs yellow, and that is the reason, they say, why Homer designates it the ‘Yellow River.’ Animals as a general rule have no hair on their internal surfaces, and, in regard to their extremities, they have hair on the upper, but not on the lower side. The hare, or dasypod, is the only animal known to have hair inside its mouth and underneath its feet. Further, the so-called mousewhale instead of teeth has hairs in its mouth resembling pigs’ bristles. 1019