Chap. 83.] GENERATION OF TERRESTRIAL ANIMALS. 541 



ploys for this purpose all hours both of day and night ; other 

 animals become sated with venereal pleasures, man hardly 

 knows any satiety. Messalina, 39 the wife of Claudius Caesar, 

 thinking this a palm quite worthy of an empress, selected, for 

 the purpose of deciding the question, one of the most notorious 

 of the women who followed the profession of a hired prosti- 

 tute; and the empress outdid her, after continuous intercourse, 

 night and day, at the twenty-fifth embrace. In the human 

 race also, the men have devised various substitutes for the more 

 legitimate exercise of passion, all of which outrage Nature ; 

 while the females have recourse to abortion. How much more 

 guilty than the brute beasts are we in this respect ! Hesiod 

 has stated that men j are more lustful in winter, women in 

 summer. 



Coupling is performed back to back by the elephant, the 

 camel, the tiger, the lynx, the rhinoceros, the lion, the dasy- 

 pus, and the rabbit, the genital parts of all which animals lie 

 far back. Camels even seek desert places, or, at all events, 

 spots of a retired nature ; and to come upon them on such an 

 occasion is not unattended with danger. Coupling, with them, 

 lasts a whole day ; the only animal, indeed, of all those with 

 solid hoofs, with which such is the case. Among the quad- 

 rupeds, it is the smell that excites the passions of the male. In 

 this act, dogs also, seals, and wolves turn back to back, and 

 remain attached, though greatly against their will. In the 

 greater part of the animals above mentioned, the females 

 solicit the males ; in some, however, the males the females. 

 As to bears, they lie down, like the human race, as previous- 

 ly 40 mentioned by us ; while hedgehogs embrace standing 

 upright. In cats, the male stands above, while the female 

 assumes a crouching posture ; foxes lie on the side, the female 

 embracing the male. In the case of the cow and the hind, 

 the female is unable to endure the violence of the male, con- 

 sequently she keeps in motion during the time of coupling. 

 The buck goes from one hind to another in turn, and then 

 comes back to the first. Lizards couple entwined around each 

 other, like the animals without feet. 



All animals, the larger they are in bulk, are proportionably 

 less prolific : the elephant, the camel, and the horse produce 



39 Justly called by Juvenal, " meretricem Augustam," Sat. vi. 1. 118. 



40 B. viii. c. 54. 



