ON PARTURITION. 525 



notice, at the same time we are sure to see some rare and 

 foreign birds, as if the latter had chased the former from some 

 remote corner of the earth. Now in both of these classes of 

 creatures the time for bringing forth their young is the same. 

 Physicians, too, when these phenomena occur, are enabled 

 to predict the approach of sundry strange diseases. Bees 

 bring forth in the month of May, when honey abounds ; wasps 

 in the summer, when the fruit is ripe; and this is analogous 

 to what takes place in viviparous animals, who produce their 

 young at the period when their milk is best adapted for their 

 offspring. But other animals of the non-migratory classes, in 

 the same way, at stated seasons seek a place to deposit their 

 young as they do a store of food. And thus it results that the 

 countryman is able to decide what are the proper seasons for 

 ploughing, sowing, and getting in his harvest, forming his 

 opinion chiefly from the approach of flocks of birds, and espe- 

 cially of the seminivora. There are, however, some animals 

 in whom there is no fixed time for production, and this is 

 chiefly the case with those which are called domestic, and live 

 with the human species. These both copulate and produce 

 their young at uncertain seasons, and the reason probably is to 

 be sought for in the larger quantity of food they consume, and 

 the consequent inordinate salacity. But in these, as in the 

 human species, the process of parturition is often difficult and 

 dangerous. 



There are other animals also on whom the course of the 

 moon has influence, and which consequently copulate and bring 

 forth their young at certain periods of the year rabbits, mice, 

 and the human female may be instanced. " For the moon," ob- 

 serves Plutarch, 1 " when half full, is represented as greatly effica- 

 cious in shortening the pains of labour, and this she effects by 

 moderating and relaxing the humours hence, I think, those 

 surnames of Diana are derived, Locheia, i. e. the tutelar deity of 

 childbirth, and Eilytheia, otherwise Lucina ; for Diana and the 

 moon are synonymous." 



" In all other animals," says Pliny, 2 "there are stated seasons 

 and periods for production and utero-gestation ; in man alone 

 are they undetermined." And this is, to a great extent, true ; 



1 Sympos. lib. Hi. qu. 10. 2 Lib. vii, cap, 5. 



