BOOK VII 



The above is a description of the world, and of the 

 lands, races, seas, important rivers, islands and cities 

 that it contains. 



The nature of the animals also contained in it is Zooiogy. 

 not less important than the study of almost any other 

 department, albeit here too the human mind is not 

 capable of exploring the whole field. 



The first place will rightly be assigned to man, for Manthe 

 whose sake great "* Nature appears to have created 'specul bui 

 all other things — though she asks a cruel price for all dependeui on 

 her generous gifts, making it liardly possible to judge 

 whether she has been more a kind parent to man or 

 more a harsh stepmother. First of all, man alone of 

 all animals she drapes with borrowed resources. On 

 all the rest in various wise she bestows coverings 

 — shells, bark, spines, hides, fur, bristles, hair, 

 do^^Ti, feathers, scales, fleeces ; even the trunks of 

 trees she has protected against cold and heat by 

 bark, sometimes in two layers : but man alone on 

 the day of his Ijirth she casts away naked on the naked 

 ground, to burst at once into waihng and weeping, 

 and none otlier among all the animals is more prone 

 to tears, and that immediately at the very beginning 

 of hfe ; whereas, I vow, the much-talked-of smile of 

 infancy even at the earUest is bestowed on no child 

 less than six weeks old. This initiation into the 



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