to. VI.] THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 173 



oreus also has been impregnated, but the foetus has never 

 been known to come to maturity. The hemioni (female 

 mules) of Syria, near Phoenicia, admit the male and pro 

 create. The kind, however, though similar, is not the same. 

 Those which are called giuni are produced from a mare, 

 when the foetus has received some injury in the uterus, like 

 dwarfs among men and metachoera among swine ; and the 

 ginnus, like the dwarf, has a large genital organ. 



2. The hemionus has a long life ; for they have been 

 known to live for eighty years, as in Athens, when they 

 built the temple, this individual, though failing with age, 

 helped in drawing, and went beside them, and encou 

 raged the yoke mules to their work, so that an edict was 

 made, commanding the corn-dealers not to drive it away 

 from the vessels filled with corn. The female mule (oreus) 

 grows old sooner than the male. Some persons say that she 

 is purified when making water, but the male ages more 

 rapidly from smelling the urine. 



3. This is the manner of the reproduction of these ani 

 mals. Those who are employed in bringing up these animals 

 recognize the young from the old in this way. If the skin, 

 when drawn back from the cheek, soon recovers its shape, 

 the animal is young ; if the skin continues wrinkled for a 

 long while, the creature is aged. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



1. THE camel is pregnant ten months, and always produces 

 a single young one, for this is its nature. They separate 

 the young camel from the herd at a year old. The camel 

 will live more than fifty years. The season of parturition 

 is in the spring, and the female continues to give milk until 

 she conceives again. Their flesh and milk are exceedingly 

 sweet. The milk is drunk mixed with two or three times 

 its quantity of water. 



2. Elephants begin to copulate at twenty years old. When 

 the female is impregnated, her period of gestation, some per 

 sons say, is a year and a half; other people make it three 

 years. The difficulty of seeing their copulation causes this 

 difference of opinion respecting the period of gestation. The 

 female produces her young bending upon her haunches. 

 Her pain is evident. The calf, when it is born, sucka with 



