第45章

A similar thing has been seen to take place in those birds that are amative, as partridges and hens.Among birds of prey hawks of different form are thought to unite, and the same applies to some other birds.Nothing worth mentioning has been observed in the inhabitants of the sea, but the so-called 'rhinobates' especially is thought to spring from the union of the 'rhini' and 'batus'.And the proverb about Libya, that 'Libya is always producing something new', is said to have originated from animals of different species uniting with one another in that country, for it is said that because of the want of water all meet at the few places where springs are to be found, and that even different kinds unite in consequence.

Of the animals that arise from such union all except mules are found to copulate again with each other and to be able to produce young of both sexes, but mules alone are sterile, for they do not generate by union with one another or with other animals.The problem why any individual, whether male or female, is sterile is a general one, for some men and women are sterile, and so are other animals in their several kinds, as horses and sheep.But this kind, of mules, is universally so.The causes of sterility in other animals are several.Both men and women are sterile from birth when the parts useful for union are imperfect, so that men never grow a beard but remain like eunuchs, and women do not attain puberty; the same thing may befall others as their years advance, sometimes on account of the body being too well nourished (for men who are in too good condition and women who are too fat the seminal secretion is taken up into the body, and the former have no semen, the latter no catamenia); at other times by reason of sickness men emit the semen in a cold and liquid state, and the discharges of women are bad and full of morbid secretions.Often, too, in both sexes this state is caused by injuries in the parts and regions contributory to copulation.Some such cases are curable, others incurable, but the subjects especially remain sterile if anything of the sort has happened in the first formation of the parts in the embryo, for then are produced women of a masculine and men of a feminine appearance, and in the former the catamenia do not occur, in the latter the semen is thin and cold.Hence it is with good reason that the semen of men is tested in water to find out if it is infertile, for that which is thin and cold is quickly spread out on the surface, but the fertile sinks to the bottom, for that which is well concocted is hot indeed, but that which is firm and thick is well concocted.They test women by pessaries to see if the smells thereof permeate from below upwards to the breath from the mouth and by colours smeared upon the eyes to see if they colour the saliva.If these results do not follow it is a sign that the passages of the body, through which the catamenia are secreted, are clogged and closed.For the region about the eyes is, of all the head, that most nearly connected with the generative secretions; a proof of this is that it alone is visibly changed in sexual intercourse, and those who indulge too much in this are seen to have their eyes sunken in.The reason is that the nature of the semen is similar to that of the brain, for the material of it is watery (the heat being acquired later).And the seminal purgations are from the region of the diaphragm, for the first principle of nature is there, so that the movements from the pudenda are communicated to the chest, and the smells from the chest are perceived through the respiration.