CYNEGETICA, III. 134^159 



and in the battle for their offspring they shudder not 

 at the advancing crowd of javelin-throwers, not at 

 'he gleaming bronze and flashing iron, nor at the 

 rift cast of shaft and shower of stones, but they are 

 -iger either to die first or save their children. 

 Wild Bears," a deadly race of crafty wits, are 

 clothed in a close and rugged coat of hair ^ and a form 

 unkindly with unsmiling eyes. Sawtoothed, deadly, 

 and long is their mouth ; nose dark, eye keen, ankle 

 swift, body nimble, head broad, hands " like the hands 

 of men, feet like men's feet ; terrible their roar, 

 cunning their wits, fierce their heart ; and they are 

 much given to venery and that not orderly. For 

 evermore by day and night the females lust for 

 mating and themselves pursue the males, seldom 

 intermitting the pleasures of union and conceiving 

 young when already pregnant. For it is not the 

 custom for \\-ild beasts when they are with young 

 to mate and fulfil the work of desire, apart only 

 from the Lynxes and the weakling Hares .^ But the 

 she Bear in her desire for mating, and abhorring to 

 have her bed vvidowed, endures to devise for her 

 children thus : ere the season of birth, ere the 

 appointed day arrives, she puts pressiixe on her 

 womb and does violence to the goddesses of birth : 

 - 1 great her lechery, so great her haste for love. 

 "^he brings forth her children half formed and not 



" Ursus arctos, the European Brown Bear or the SvTian 

 Bear, U. Syriacus, which differs from the other only in its 

 litrhter colour. 



* A. 4.98 b 27. 



"^ A. 498 a 33 Ix" (^ ^wktj) tov% irodas 6/j.oiovs x^P<^''-^t "^ffirep 

 d oi Tri% &PKTOV. 



■* Cf. 515 ff. 



125 



