Page - 1092 - in The Complete Aristotle

connected with the tunic, for just as the shell is with the body of the snail so is the whole superstructure with our grub; and they do not drop off, but can only be torn off, as though they were all of a piece with him, and the removal of the tunic is as fatal to this grub as the removal of the shell would be to the snail. In course of time this grub becomes a chrysalis, as is the case with the silkworm, and lives in a motionless condition. But as yet it is not known into what winged condition it is transformed. The fruit of the wild fig contains the psen, or fig-wasp. This creature is a grub at first; but in due time the husk peels off and the psen leaves the husk behind it and flies away, and enters into the fruit of the fig-tree through its orifice, and causes the fruit not to drop off; and with a view to this phenomenon, country folk are in the habit of tying wild figs on to fig-trees, and of planting wild fig-trees near domesticated ones. < div id=“section100” class=“section” title=“33”> 33 In the case of animals that are quadrupeds and red-blooded and oviparous, generation takes place in the spring, but copulation does not take place in an uniform season. In some cases it takes place in the spring, in others in summer time, and in others in the autumn, according as the subsequent season may be favourable for the young. The tortoise lays eggs with a hard shell and of two colours within, like birds’ eggs, and after laying them buries them in the ground and treads the ground hard over them; it then broods over the eggs on the surface of the ground, and hatches the eggs the next year. The hemys, or fresh-water tortoise, leaves the water and lays its eggs. It digs a hole of a casklike shape, and deposits therein the eggs; after rather less than thirty days it digs the eggs up again and hatches them with great rapidity, and leads its young at once off to the water. The sea-turtle lays on the ground eggs just like the eggs of domesticated birds, buries the eggs in the ground, and broods over them in the night-time. It lays a very great number of eggs, amounting at times to one hundred. Lizards and crocodiles, terrestrial and fluvial, lay eggs on land. The eggs of lizards hatch spontaneously on land, for the lizard does not live on into the next year; in fact, the life of the animal is said not to exceed six months. The river-crocodile lays a number of eggs, sixty at the most, white in colour, and broods over them for sixty days: for, by the way, the creature is very long- 1092