第30章

And the colours of horns and nails and claw and hoof follow the colour of the skin and the hair. For according as the skin of an animal is black, or white, or of medium hue, so are the horns, the claws, or the hooves, as the case may be, of hue to match. And it is the same with nails. The teeth, however, follow after the bones.

Thus in black men, such as the Aethiopians and the like, the teeth and bones are white, but the nails are black, like the whole of the skin.

Horns in general are hollow at their point of attachment to the bone which juts out from the head inside the horn, but they have a solid portion at the tip, and they are simple and undivided in structure. In the case of the stag alone of all animals the horns are solid throughout, and ramify into branches (or antlers). And, whereas no other animal is known to shed its horns, the deer sheds its horns annually, unless it has been castrated; and with regard to the effects of castration in animals we shall have much to say hereafter. Horns attach rather to the skin than to the bone; which will account for the fact that there are found in Phrygia and elsewhere cattle that can move their horns as freely as their ears.

Of animals furnished with nails-and, by the way, all animals have nails that have toes, and toes that have feet, except the elephant; and the elephant has toes undivided and slightly articulated, but has no nails whatsoever--of animals furnished with nails, some are straight-nailed, like man; others are crooked nailed, as the lion among animals that walk, and the eagle among animals that fly.

The following are the properties of hair and of parts analogous to hair, and of skin or hide. All viviparous animals furnished with feet have hair; all oviparous animals furnished with feet have horn-like tessellates; fishes, and fishes only, have scales-that is, such oviparous fishes as have the crumbling egg or roe. For of the lanky fishes, the conger has no such egg, nor the muraena, and the eel has no egg at all.

The hair differs in the way of thickness and fineness, and of length, according to the locality of the part in which it is found, and according to the quality of skin or hide on which it grows. For, as a general rule, the thicker the hide, the harder and the thicker is the hair; and the hair is inclined to grow in abundance and to a great length in localities of the bodies hollow and moist, if the localities be fitted for the growth of hair at all. The facts are similar in the case of animals whether coated with scales or with tessellates.

With soft-haired animals the hair gets harder with good feeding, and with hard-haired or bristly animals it gets softer and scantier from the same cause. Hair differs in quality also according to the relative heat or warmth of the locality: just as the hair in man is hard in warm places and soft in cold ones. Again, straight hair is inclined to be soft, and curly hair to be bristly.

Hair is naturally fissile, and in this respect it differs in degree in diverse animals. In some animals the hair goes on gradually hardening into bristle until it no longer resembles hair but spine, as in the case of the hedgehog. And in like manner with the nails; for in some animals the nail differs as regards solidity in no way from bone.

Of all animals man has the most delicate skin: that is, if we take into consideration his relative size. In the skin or hide of all animals there is a mucous liquid, scanty in some animals and plentiful in others, as, for instance, in the hide of the ox; for men manufacture glue out of it. (And, by the way, in some cases glue is manufactured from fishes also.) The skin, when cut, is in itself devoid of sensation; and this is especially the case with the skin on the head, owing to there being no flesh between it and the skull.

And wherever the skin is quite by itself, if it be cut asunder, it does not grow together again, as is seen in the thin part of the jaw, in the prepuce, and the eyelid. In all animals the skin is one of the parts that extends continuous and unbroken, and it comes to a stop only where the natural ducts pour out their contents, and at the mouth and nails.

All sanguineous animals, then, have skin; but not all such animals have hair, save only under the circumstances described above. The hair changes its colour as animals grow old, and in man it turns white or grey. With animals, in general, the change takes place, but not very obviously, or not so obviously as in the case of the horse. Hair turns grey from the point backwards to the roots. But, in the majority of cases, grey hairs are white from the beginning; and this is a proof that greyness of hair does not, as some believe to be the case, imply withering or decrepitude, for no part is brought into existence in a withered or decrepit condition.

In the eruptive malady called the white-sickness all the hairs get grey; and instances have been known where the hair became grey while the patients were ill of the malady, whereas the grey hairs shed off and black ones replaced them on their recovery. (Hair is more apt to turn grey when it is kept covered than when exposed to the action of the outer air.) In men, the hair over the temples is the first to turn grey, and the hair in the front grows grey sooner than the hair at the back; and the hair on the pubes is the last to change colour.