188 THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS. [B. VII, 



:narriages are unfruitful, both men and women become preg- 

 nant, if the marriage is dissolved and they marry again. The 

 same thing takes place respecting the birth of male and 

 female children. For sometimes only children of one sex 

 are produced by a marriage ; and if this is dissolved, and the 

 parents marry again, children of the other sex are produced. 

 These things also vary with the age of the parents; for 

 some when young have female children, and when older 

 males, though the contrary sometimes takes place. 



3. The same is the case with the whole of the reproductive 

 function. For some persons have no children when they 

 are young, but have them afterwards ; others have children 

 at first, but none afterwards ; and there are some women 

 who conceive with difficulty, but when they have conceived 

 bear children ; others conceive easily, but the foetus never 

 comes to maturity. There are also both men and women 

 who only produce children of one sex, as the story goes of 

 Hercules, who had but one daughter in seventy-two children. 

 Those who have been barren, and either after great care, or 

 from any other cause, at last conceive, more frequently 

 bear a daughter than a son. It often happens also that men 

 who have engendered become impotent, and subsequently 

 return to their former condition. 



4. Maimed parents produce maimed children ; and so also 

 lame and blind parents produce laine and blind children ; and, 

 on the whole, children are often born with anything contrary 

 to nature, or any mark which their parents may have, such as 

 tumours and wounds. Such marks have often been handed 

 down for three generations ; as if a person had a mark on 

 their arm which was not seen in the son, but the grandson 

 exhibited a dark confused spot on the same place. The 

 circumstances, however, are rare; and sound children are 

 generally produced from lame parents ; nor is there any com- 

 plete certainty in these matters ; and children resemble 

 their parents or their grandparents, and sometimes they 

 resemble neither. This is handed down for many gene- 

 rations ; as in Sicily, a woman cohabited with an Ethiopian, 

 her daughter was not black, but her daughter's child was so. 



5. For the most part the girls resemble their mother, and 

 the boys their father ; though the contrary is often the case, 

 and the females resemble their father, and the males their 



