148 THE HISTORY OF AMMALS. [B. VI 



npon one of which the male sits, on the other the female ; 

 and each of them hatches and brings up its own : and the 

 male has sexual intercourse with its young as soon as they 

 are hatched. 



CHAPTER IX. 



1. THE peacock lives about twenty-five years, and produces 

 young generally at three years old ; by which time also they 

 have obtained their variegated plumage : and it hatches in 

 thirty days, or rather more. It only produces young once 

 a-year, laying twelve eggs, or not quite so many. It lays 

 its eggs at intervals of two or three days, and not regularly. 

 A-t first they lay only eight. The pea-fowl also lays barren 

 eggs : they copulate in the spring, and lay their eggs imme 

 diately afterwards 



2. This bird sheds its feathers when the leaves of the 

 trees begin to fall, and begins to acquire them again with 

 the first budding in the spring. Those who rear these 

 birds place the eggs for incubation beneatli domestic fowls ; 

 because the peacock flies at, and torments the hen when 

 she is sitting ; for which reason some of the wild birds 

 make their escape from the males before they begin to lay 

 and sit. They place only two eggs under domestic fowls, 

 for these are all that they can hatch and bring out ; and 

 they take care to put food before them, that they may not 

 get up and desert their incubation. 



3. Birds at the season of sexual intercourse have large 

 testicles. In the more lascivious they are always more evi 

 dent, as the domestic cock and the partridge. In those 

 that are not always lascivious, they are less. This is the 

 manner of the gestation and reproduction of birds. 



CHAPTER X. 



1. IT has been already observed that fish are not always 

 oviparous, for the selache are always viviparous. All the 

 rest are tviparous. The selache are viviparous, having 

 first of all produced ova internally ; and these they bring up 

 in themselves, except the batrachus. Fish have also, as I 

 observed before, very different uteri in different kinds : for 

 in the oviparous genera the uterus is double, and situated 

 low down. In the selache the uterus is more like that of birds. 

 There is this difference, however, that the ova are not placed 



