Page - 1035 - in The Complete Aristotle

discharges it by way of the gills; and, by the way, the gill-shaped organs in the crawfish are very numerous. The following properties are common to all crustaceans: they have in all cases two teeth, or mandibles (for the front teeth in the crawfish are two in number), and in all cases there is in the mouth a small fleshy structure serving for a tongue; and the stomach is close to the mouth, only that the crawfish has a little oesophagus in front of the stomach, and there is a straight gut attached to it. This gut, in the crawfish and its congeners, and in the carids, extends in a straight line to the tail, and terminates where the animal discharges the residuum, and where the female deposits her spawn; in the crab it terminates where the flap is situated, and in the centre of the flap. (And by the way, in all these animals the spawn is deposited outside.) Further, the female has the place for the spawn running along the gut. And, again, all these animals have, more or less, an organ termed the ‘mytis’, or ‘poppyjuice’. We must now proceed to review their several differentiae. The crawfish then, as has been said, has two teeth, large and hollow, in which is contained a juice resembling the mytis, and in between the teeth is a fleshy substance, shaped like a tongue. After the mouth comes a short oesophagus, and then a membranous stomach attached to the oesophagus, and at the orifice Of the stomach are three teeth, two facing one another and a third standing by itself underneath. Coming off at a bend from the stomach is a gut, simple and of equal thickness throughout the entire length of the body until it reaches the anal vent. These are all common properties of the crawfish, the carid, and the crab; for the crab, be it remembered, has two teeth. Again, the crawfish has a duct attached all the way from the chest to the anal vent; and this duct is connected with the ovary in the female, and with the seminal ducts in the male. This passage is attached to the concave surface of the flesh in such a way that the flesh is in betwixt the duct and the gut; for the gut is related to the convexity and this duct to the concavity, pretty much as is observed in quadrupeds. And the duct is identical in both the sexes; that is to say, the duct in both is thin and white, and charged with a sallow- coloured moisture, and is attached to the chest. (The following are the properties of the egg and of the convolutes in the carid.) The male, by the way, differs from the female in regard to its flesh, in having in connexion with the chest two separate and distinct white substances, resembling in colour and conformation the tentacles of the cuttle- fish, and they are convoluted like the ‘poppy’ or quasi-liver of the trumpet- 1035