BOOK VIII. Lxi. 150-LX111. 153 



rearing against the creatures limbs on this side and 

 that, in scientific combat, attacking and retiring at 

 the niost necessary points, until the elephant turning 

 round and round in an unceasing whirl was brought 

 to the ground with an earth-shaking crash. 



LXII. The genus dog breeds twice a year. Ma- Dog 

 turity for reproduction begins at the age of one. '^^" "'^' 

 They carry their young for sixty days. Puppies 

 are born bUnd, and acquire sight the more slowly 

 the more copious the milk with which they are 

 suckled ; though the bhnd period never lasts more 

 than three weeks or less than one. Some people 

 report that a puppy born singly sees on the 9th day, 

 twins on the lOth, and so on, a corresponding number 

 of days' delay in seeing Hght being added for each 

 extra puppy ; and that a bitch of a first Utter begins 

 to see sooner. The best in a Utter is the one that 

 begins to see last, or else the one that the mother 

 carries into the kennel first after deUvery. 



LXIII. Rabies in dogs, as we have said, is dangerous Precauiion.-^ 

 to human beings in periods when the dog-star is ^yj^^^' 

 shining,<» as it causes fatal hydrophobia to those bitten 

 in those circumstances. Consequently a precaution- 

 ai-y measiu-e during the 30 days in question is 

 to mix dung — mostly chicken's droppings, in the dog's 

 food, or, if the disease has come already, hellebore. 

 But after a bite the only cure is one which was lately 

 discovered from an oracle, the root of the wild-rose 

 caUed in Greek dog-rose. Columella states that if a 

 dog's tail is docked by being bitten off and the end 

 joint amputated 40 days after birth, the spinal marrow 

 having been removed the tail does not grow again 

 and the dog is not Uable to rabies. The only cases 

 that have come down to us among portents, so far 



107 



