64 The Natural History of Selborne 



naturalist. For it looks as if these creatures would not be 

 suffocated, though both their mouths and nostrils were 

 stopped. This curious formation of the head may be of 

 singular service to beasts of chase, by affording them free 

 respiration : and no doubt these additional nostrils are thrown 

 open when they are hard run.* Mr. Ray observed that at 

 Malta the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were 

 hard worked : for they, being naturally straight or small, did 

 not admit air sufficient to serve them when they travelled, 

 or laboured, in that hot climate. And we know that grooms, 

 and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils necessary, and 

 a perfection, in hunters and running horses. 



Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to 

 have had some notion that stags have four spiracula : 



" TeTpa8vp,oi plves, niffvpes TTTOIIJO-I SunAot." 



" Quadrifidas nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales." 



OPP. CYN. Lib. ii. I. 181. 



Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say 

 that goats breathe at their ears : whereas he asserts just the 

 contrary : " AA/c/zcuo>v ya-p OVK dXrjdrf Aeyei, (fad/ievo^ dvaTrvfiv 

 ras cuyas Kara TO. wra." " Alcmaeon does not advance what is 

 true, when he avers that goats breathe through their ears." 

 " History of Animals." Book I. chap. xi. 



* In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me the following curious 

 and pertinent reply : " I was much surprised to find in the antelope some- 

 thing analogous to what you mention as so remarkable in deer. This 

 animal also has a long slit beneath each eye, which can be opened and 

 shut at pleasure. On holding an orange to one, the creature made as 

 much use of those orifices as of his nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and 

 seeming to smell it through them." 



