Aristotle

“ As it grows old the sexual passion dies away, as we have already remarked. Very often a boar, when more or less impotent from age or debility, finding itself unable to accomplish the sexual commerce with due speed, and growing fatigued with the standing posture, will roll the sow over on the ground, and the pair will conclude the operation side by side of one another. The sow is sure of conception if it drops its lugs in rutting time ”

“ But whensoever creatures are spontaneously generated, either in other animals, in the soil, or on plants, or in the parts of these, and when such are generated male and female, then from the copulation of such spontaneously generated males and females there is generated a something-a something never identical in shape with the parents, but a something imperfect. For instance, the issue of copulation in lice is nits; in flies, grubs; in fleas, grubs egg-like in shape; and from these issues the parent-species is never reproduced, nor is any animal produced at all, but the like nondescripts only. ”

“ Swarms are robbed of their honey on the appearance of the wild fig. They produce the best larvae at the time the honey is a-making. The bee carries wax and bees bread round its legs, but vomits the honey into the cell. After depositing its young, it broods over it like a bird. The grub when it is small lies slantwise in the comb, but by and by rises up straight by an effort of its own and takes food, and holds on so tightly to the honeycomb as actually to cling to it.
The young of bees and of drones is white, and from the young come the grubs; and the grubs grow into bees and drones. ”

“ Thus, in all animals, the earliest secretion of sperm is unfruitful, or if it be fruitful the issue is comparatively poor and small. And this phenomenon is especially observable in man, in viviparous quadrupeds, and in birds; for in the case of man and the quadruped the offspring is smaller, and in the case of the bird, the egg.
For animals that copulate, of one and the same species, the age for maturity is in most species tolerably uniform, unless it occurs prematurely by reason of abnormality, or is postponed by physical injury. ”

“ Bitches do not submit to the male throughout their lives, but only until they reach a certain maturity of years. As a general rule, they are sexually receptive and conceptive until they are twelve years old; although, by the way, cases have been known where dogs and bitches have been respectively procreative and conceptive to the ages of eighteen and even of twenty years. But, as a rule, age diminishes the capability of generation and of conception with these animals as with all others. ”

“ In animals where generation goes by heredity, wherever there is duality of sex generation is due to copulation. In the group of fishes, however, there are some that are neither male nor female, and these, while they are identical generically with other fish, differ from them specifically; but there are others that stand altogether isolated and apart by themselves. Other fishes there are that are always female and never male, and from them are conceived what correspond to the wind-eggs in birds. Such eggs, by the way, in birds are all unfruitful ”

“ Man pairs and breeds at all seasons, as is the case also with domesticated animals, owing to the shelter and good feeding they enjoy: that is to say, with those whose period of gestation is also comparatively brief, as the sow and the bitch, and with those birds that breed frequently. Many animals time the season of intercourse with a view to the right nurture subsequently of their young. In the human species, the male is more under sexual excitement in winter, and the female in summer. ”

“ When they reach fifteen years, they become unproductive, and are getting old. If a sow be highly fed, it is all the more eager for sexual commerce, whether old or young; but, if it be over-fattened in pregnancy, it gives the less milk after parturition. With regard to the age of the parents, the litter is the best when they are in their prime; but with regard to the seasons of the year, the litter is the best that comes at the beginning of winter; and the summer litter the poorest, consisting as it usually does of animals small and thin and flaccid. ”

“ The boar is good for breeding purposes until he is three years of age; but after that age his issue deteriorates, for after that age his vigour is on the decline. The boar is most capable after a good feed, and with the first sow it mounts; if poorly fed or put to many females, the copulation is abbreviated, and the litter is comparatively poor. The first litter of the sow is the fewest in number; at the second litter she is at her prime. The animal, as it grows old, continues to breed, but the sexual desire abates. ”

“ Crabs copulate at the front parts of one another, belly to belly, throwing their overlapping opercula to meet one another: first the smaller crab mounts the larger at the rear; after he has mounted, the larger one turns on one side. Now, the female differs in no respect from the male except in the circumstance that its operculum is larger, more elevated, and more hairy, and into this operculum it spawns its eggs and in the same neighbourhood is the outlet of the residuum. ”

“ With regard to insects, that the male is less than the female and that he mounts upon her back, and how he performs the act of copulation and the circumstance that he gives over reluctantly, all this has already been set forth, most cases of insect copulation this process is speedily followed up by parturition.
All insects engender grubs, with the exception of a species of butterfly; and the female of this species lays a hard egg, resembling the seed of the cnecus, with a juice inside it. ”

“ And of insects some are derived from insect congeners, as the venom-spider and the common-spider from the venom-spider and the common-spider, and so with the attelabus or locust, the acris or grasshopper, and the tettix or cicada. Other insects are not derived from living parentage, but are generated spontaneously: some out of dew falling on leaves, ordinarily in spring-time, but not seldom in winter when there has been a stretch of fair weather and southerly winds; others grow in decaying mud or dung; others in timber, green or dry; some in the hair of animals; some in the flesh of animals ”

“ When the summer solstice comes, the creature issues from the husk at night-time, and in a moment, as the husk breaks, the larva becomes the perfect cicada. The creature, also, at once turns black in colour and harder and larger, and takes to singing. In both species, the larger and the smaller, it is the male that sings, and the female that is unvocal. At first, the males are the sweeter eating; but, after copulation, the females, as they arc full then of white eggs. ”

“ So much for the generation of insects. Their death is due to the shrivelling of their organs, just as the larger animals die of old age.
Winged insects die in autumn from the shrinking of their wings. The myops dies from dropsy in the eyes. ”

“ After parturition, an interval of a year elapses before the female is again receptive to the male.
The female elephant becomes sexually receptive when ten years old at the youngest, and when fifteen at the oldest; and the male is sexually capable when five years old, or six. The season for intercourse is spring. The male allows an interval of three years to elapse after commerce with a female: and, after it has once impregnated a female, it has no intercourse with her again. The period of gestation with the female is two years ”

“ Certain of the dog-fishes, for example the spotted dog, seem to breed twice a month, and this results from the circumstance that the eggs do not all reach maturity at the same time.
Some fishes breed at all seasons, as the muraena. This animal lays a great number of eggs at a time; and the young when hatched are very small but grow with great rapidity, like the young of the hippurus, for these fishes from being diminutive at the outset grow with exceptional rapidity to an exceptional size. ”

“ These rulers have the abdomen or part below the waist half as large again, and they are called by some the 'mothers', from an idea that they bear or generate the bees; and, as a proof of this theory of their motherhood, they declare that the brood of the drones appears even when there is no ruler-bee in the hive, but that the bees do not appear in his absence. Others, again, assert that these insects copulate, and that the drones are male and the bees female. ”

“ The smallest of all the species is the turtle-dove. Pigeons breed and hatch at all seasons, if they are furnished with a sunny place and all requisites; unless they are so furnished, they breed only in the summer. The spring brood is the best, or the autumn brood. At all events, without doubt, the produce of the hot season, the summer brood, is the poorest of the three. ”

“ There is a kind of humble-bee that builds a cone-shaped nest of clay against a stone or in some similar situation, besmearing the clay with something like spittle, And this nest or hive is exceedingly thick and hard; in point of fact, one can hardly break it open with a spike. Here is the insects lay their eggs, and white grubs are produced wrapped in a black membrane. Apart from the membrane there is found some wax in the honeycomb; and this wax is much sallower in hue than the wax in the honeycomb of the bee. ”

“ And the spider, when it lays its eggs, broods over them, and in three days the eggs or grubs take definite shape.
All spiders lay their eggs in a web; hut some spiders lay in a small and fine web, and others in a thick one; and some, as a rule, lay in a round-shaped case or capsule, and some are only partially enveloped in the web. The young grubs are not all developed at one and the same time into young spiders; but the moment the development takes place, the young spider makes a leap and begins to spin his web. ”

“ Crustaceans, then, hatch their eggs by brooding over them as they carry them about beneath their bodies; but the octopus, the sepia, and the like hatch their eggs without stirring from the spot where they may have laid them, and this statement is particularly applicable to the sepia; in fact, the nest of the female sepia is often seen exposed to view close in to shore. The female octopus at times sits brooding over her eggs, and at other times squats in front of her hole, stretching out her tentacles on guard. ”

“ The females first insert the hollow tub@ which they have at their tails, in the ground, and then lay their eggs: and the male, by the way, is not furnished with this tube. The females lay their eggs all in a lump together, and in one spot, so that the entire lump of eggs resembles a honeycomb. After they have laid their eggs, the eggs assume the shape of oval grubs that are enveloped by a sort of thin clay, like a membrane; in this membrane-like formation they grow on to maturity. The larva is so soft that it collapses at a touch. ”

“ The female sepia goes pregnant in the spring-time, and lays its eggs after fifteen days of gestation; after the eggs are laid there comes in another fifteen days something like a bunch of grapes, and at the bursting of these the young sepiae issue forth. But if, when the young ones are fully formed, you sever the outer covering a moment too soon, the young creatures eject excrement, and their colour changes from white to red in their alarm. ”

“ Of bees there are various species. The best kind is a little round mottled insect; another is long, and resembles the anthrena; a third is a black and flat-bellied, and is nick-named the 'robber'; a fourth kind is the drone, the largest of all, but stingless and inactive. And this proportionate size of the drone explains why some bee-masters place a net-work in front of the hives; for the network is put to keep the big drones out while it lets the little bees go in.
Of the king bees there are, as has been stated, two kinds. In every hive there are more kings than one ”