Chap. 13.] AMPHIBIOUS ANIMALS. 13 



though it attacks other marine animals as well, manifests an 

 enmity to the pastinaea in particular, just as on dry land the 

 weasel does to serpents ; with such avidity does it go in pur- 

 suit of what is poisonous even ! Persons stung by the pas- 

 tinaea find a remedy in the flesh of the galeos, as also in that 

 of the sur-muUet and the vegetable production known as 

 laser.80 



CHAP. 13. (3). AMPHIBIOUS ANIMALS. CASTOREITM I SIXTY-SIX 



EEMEDIE8 AND OBSERVATIONS. 



The might of Nature, too, is equally conspicuous in the 

 animals which live upon dry land as well f^ the beaver, for 

 instance, more generally known as " castor," and the testes®^ of 

 which are called in medicine '* castorea." Sextius, a most 

 careful enquirer into the nature and history of medicinal sub- 

 stances, assures us that it is not the truth that this animal, 

 when on the point of being taken, bites off its testes : he in- 

 forms us, also, that these substances are small, tightly knit, 

 and attached to the back-bone, and that it is impossible to 

 remove them without taking the animal's life. We learn from 

 him that there is a mode of adulterating them by substituting 

 the kidneys of the beaver, which are of considerable size, 

 whereas the genuine testes are found to be extremely diminu- 

 tive : in addition to which, he says that they must not be taken 

 to be bladders, as they are two in number, a provision not to be 

 found in any animal. Within these pouches, ^^ he says, there 

 is a liquid found, which is preserved by being put in salt ; the 

 genuine castoreum being easily known from the false, by the 

 fact of its being contained in two pouches, attached by a single 

 ligament. The genuine article, he says, is sometimes fraudu- 

 lently sophisticated by the admixture of gum and blood, or 

 else hammoniacum :^* as the pouches, in fact, ought to be of 



*° See B. xis. c. 15, and B. xxii. c, 49. 



8^ As water, and are consequently amphibious. 



^2 The Castoreum of the ancients, the " castor" of our Materia Medica, 

 is noi in reality produced from the testes of the beaver, as was supposed 

 by the ancients, but from two oyal pouches situate near the anus of the 

 animal of either sex. There are four of these pouches in all, two con- 

 taining a species of fat, and two larger ones including in their membranous 

 cells a viscous fetid substance, which forms the castor of medicine. It is 

 considered to be an antispasmodic. 



^'■' " Folliculos." A very appropriate term, as Ajasson remarks. 



^* See B. xii. c. 49, and B. xxxiv. c. 14. 



