B. VI.T.1 THE HISTOEY OF ANIMALS. 187 



one time. If the second conception take place soon after 

 the first, they bear and produce the foetus, as if it were a 

 twin. This, they say, was the case with Iphicles and Her- 

 cules. 



3. The possibility of the case is manifest, for an adulteress 

 has been known to produce one child like her husband, and 

 another like her paramour; and a case has occurred of a 

 woman having conceived twins, and then conceived a third 

 child upon them ; and when the proper time came, the 

 twins were born perfect, the other was only a foetus of five 

 months old, which died immediately : and in another case, 

 a woman produced, first of all, a foetus of seven months old, 

 and then twins, perfectly developed ; the former perished, 

 but the latter survived. And some women have conceived 

 at the same time as they miscarried, and haye ejected 

 one foetus while they bore the other. In most females, 

 who have cohabited after the eighth mouth after conception, 

 the child has been born filled with a shining mucous-like 

 substance, and has often appeared full of the food which has 

 been eaten by the mother ; and if she has fed upon food 

 more than usually salt, the child has been born without nails. 



CHAPTER VI. 



1. THE milk that is produced before the seventh month is 

 useless ; but as soon as the child is alive the milk be- 

 comes good. At first it is salt, like that of sheep. Most 

 women during pregnancy are affected by wine, and if 

 they drink it they become faint and feeble. The begin- 

 ning and the ending of the reproductive power in both 

 sexes is marked in the male by the emission of the 

 semen, in the female by the catamenia. They are not, how- 

 ever, fertile when these first occur, nor while they are 

 still small and weak. The period of the commencement 

 of these signs has been mentioned. In women the cata- 

 menia usually cease at forty ; but if they pass over this age, 

 they go on to fifty ; and some have even produced children 

 at that period, but none later than this period. 



2. The reproductive function in men usually continues 

 active till they are sixty years old ; if they pass beyond this 

 period, till they are seventy ; and some men have had chil- 

 dren at seventy years old. It frequently happens that, when 



