B. V.] TUE HISTORY OP ANIMALS. 115 



female goes with young twelve months, and produces one 

 foal, for the animal is one of those which produce but 

 one. Both the male and female arrive at puberty at the 

 age of three years, and the female is ready for the male 

 again at the end of a year after parturition. 



14. The elephant arrives at puberty, the earliest at ten 

 years of age, the latest at fifteen, and the male at five or six 

 years old. The season for the intercourse of the sexes is 

 in the spring : and the male is ready again at the end of 

 three years, but he never touches again a female whom he 

 has once impregnated. Her period of gestation is two years, 

 and then she produces one calf, for the elephant belongs to 

 the class of animals which have but one young one at a 

 time. The young one is as large as a calf of two or three 

 months old. This, then, is the nature of the sexual inter- 

 course of those animals which perform this function. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



1. WE must now treat of the mode of reproduction, both of 

 those animals which use sexual intercourse, and those which 

 do not ; and, first of all, we will speak of the testacea, for 

 this is the only entire class which is not reproduced by 

 sexual intercourse. The pur purse collect together in the 

 spring, and produce what is called their nidamental capsules 

 (melicera), for it is like honey-comb, though not so deeply 

 cut, but, as it were, made up of the white pods of vetches. 

 These capsules have neither opening nor perforation, nor are 

 the purpurae produced from them ; but both these and other 

 testacea are produced from mud and putrefaction. But 

 this substance is an excrementitious matter both in the pur- 

 pura and the ceryx, for these last also produce similar cap- 

 sules. 



2. The testacea which produce these capsules are gene- 

 rated in the same way as the rest of their class, but more 

 readily when there are homogeneous particles pre-existing 

 among them ; for, when they deposit their nidamental cap- 

 sules, they emit a clammy mucus, from which the scales of 

 the capsules are formed. When all these have been depo- 

 sited, they emit upon the ground a sort of chyle, and small 

 purpurae spring up upon the same spot and adhere to the 

 larger purpurae, though some of these can hardly be dis- 



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