Page - 1230 - in The Complete Aristotle

known for what reason they run themselves aground on dry land; at all events, it is said that they do so at times, and for no obvious reason. < div id=“section229” class=“section” title=“49”> 49 Just as with all animals a change of action follows a change of circumstance, so also a change of character follows a change of action, and often some portions of the physical frame undergo a change, occurs in the case of birds. Hens, for instance, when they have beaten the cock in a fight, will crow like the cock and endeavour to tread him; the crest rises up on their head and the tail-feathers on the rump, so that it becomes difficult to recognize that they are hens; in some cases there is a growth of small spurs. On the death of a hen a cock has been seen to undertake the maternal duties, leading the chickens about and providing them with food, and so intent upon these duties as to cease crowing and indulging his sexual propensities. Some cock-birds are congenitally so feminine that they will submit patiently to other males who attempt to tread them. < div id=“section230” class=“section” title=“50”> 50 Some animals change their form and character, not only at certain ages and at certain seasons, but in consequence of being castrated; and all animals possessed of testicles may be submitted to this operation. Birds have their testicles inside, and oviparous quadrupeds close to the loins; and of viviparous animals that walk some have them inside, and most have them outside, but all have them at the lower end of the belly. Birds are castrated at the rump at the part where the two sexes unite in copulation. If you burn this twice or thrice with hot irons, then, if the bird be full-grown, his crest grows sallow, he ceases to crow, and foregoes sexual passion; but if you cauterize the bird when young, none of these male attributes propensities will come to him as he grows up. The case is the same with men: if you mutilate them in boyhood, the later-growing hair never comes, and the voice never changes but remains high-pitched; if they be mutilated in early manhood, the late growths of hair quit them except the growth on the groin, and that diminishes but does not entirely depart. The congenital growths of hair never fall out, for a eunuch 1230