第46章

All other animals may, with very few exceptions, be comprehended within four genera: to wit, molluscs, crustaceans, testaceans, and insects. Of these four genera, the mollusc, the crustacean, and the insect have all the senses: at all events, they have sight, smell, and taste. As for insects, both winged and wingless, they can detect the presence of scented objects afar off, as for instance bees and snipes detect the presence of honey at a distance; and do so recognizing it by smell. Many insects are killed by the smell of brimstone; ants, if the apertures to their dwellings be smeared with powdered origanum and brimstone, quit their nests; and most insects may be banished with burnt hart's horn, or better still by the burning of the gum styrax. The cuttle-fish, the octopus, and the crawfish may be caught by bait. The octopus, in fact, clings so tightly to the rocks that it cannot be pulled off, but remains attached even when the knife is employed to sever it; and yet, if you apply fleabane to the creature, it drops off at the very smell of it. The facts are similar in regard to taste. For the food that insects go in quest of is of diverse kinds, and they do not all delight in the same flavours:

for instance, the bee never settles on a withered or wilted flower, but on fresh and sweet ones; and the conops or gnat settles only on acrid substances and not on sweet. The sense of touch, by the way, as has been remarked, is common to all animals. Testaceans have the senses of smell and taste. With regard to their possession of the sense of smell, that is proved by the use of baits, e.g. in the case of the purple-fish; for this creature is enticed by baits of rancid meat, which it perceives and is attracted to from a great distance.

The proof that it possesses a sense of taste hangs by the proof of its sense of smell; for whenever an animal is attracted to a thing by perceiving its smell, it is sure to like the taste of it. Further, all animals furnished with a mouth derive pleasure or pain from the touch of sapid juices.

With regard to sight and hearing, we cannot make statements with thorough confidence or on irrefutable evidence. However, the solen or razor-fish, if you make a noise, appears to burrow in the sand, and to hide himself deeper when he hears the approach of the iron rod (for the animal, be it observed, juts a little out of its hole, while the greater part of the body remains within),-and scallops, if you present your finger near their open valves, close them tight again as though they could see what you were doing. Furthermore, when fishermen are laying bait for neritae, they always get to leeward of them, and never speak a word while so engaged, under the firm impression that the animal can smell and hear; and they assure us that, if any one speaks aloud, the creature makes efforts to escape. With regard to testaceans, of the walking or creeping species the urchin appears to have the least developed sense of smell; and, of the stationary species, the ascidian and the barnacle.

So much for the organs of sense in the general run of animals.

We now proceed to treat of voice.

9Voice and sound are different from one another; and language differs from voice and sound. The fact is that no animal can give utterance to voice except by the action of the pharynx, and consequently such animals as are devoid of lung have no voice; and language is the articulation of vocal sounds by the instrumentality of the tongue. Thus, the voice and larynx can emit vocal or vowel sounds;non-vocal or consonantal sounds are made by the tongue and the lips;and out of these vocal and non-vocal sounds language is composed.

Consequently, animals that have no tongue at all or that have a tongue not freely detached, have neither voice nor language; although, by the way, they may be enabled to make noises or sounds by other organs than the tongue.

Insects, for instance, have no voice and no language, but they can emit sound by internal air or wind, though not by the emission of air or wind; for no insects are capable of respiration. But some of them make a humming noise, like the bee and the other winged insects; and others are said to sing, as the cicada. And all these latter insects make their special noises by means of the membrane that is underneath the 'hypozoma'-those insects, that is to say, whose body is thus divided; as for instance, one species of cicada, which makes the sound by means of the friction of the air. Flies and bees, and the like, produce their special noise by opening and shutting their wings in the act of flying; for the noise made is by the friction of air between the wings when in motion. The noise made by grasshoppers is produced by rubbing or reverberating with their long hind-legs.

No mollusc or crustacean can produce any natural voice or sound.

Fishes can produce no voice, for they have no lungs, nor windpipe and pharynx; but they emit certain inarticulate sounds and squeaks, which is what is called their 'voice', as the lyra or gurnard, and the sciaena (for these fishes make a grunting kind of noise) and the caprus or boar-fish in the river Achelous, and the chalcis and the cuckoo-fish; for the chalcis makes a sort piping sound, and the cuckoo-fish makes a sound greatly like the cry of the cuckoo, and is nicknamed from the circumstance. The apparent voice in all these fishes is a sound caused in some cases by a rubbing motion of their gills, which by the way are prickly, or in other cases by internal parts about their bellies; for they all have air or wind inside them, by rubbing and moving which they produce the sounds. Some cartilaginous fish seem to squeak.