NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 41 



a communication with the nose. Here seems to be an 

 extraordinary provision of nature worthy our attention ; 

 and which has not, that I know of, been noticed by any 

 naturalist. For it looks as if these creatures would not be 

 suffocated, though both their mouths and nostrils were 

 stopped. This curious formation of the head may be of 

 singular service to beasts of chase, by affording them free 

 respiration : and no doubt these additional nostrils are 

 thrown open when they are hard run. Mr. Ray observed 

 that at Malta the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses 

 as were hard worked : for they, being naturally straight or 

 small, did not admit air sufficient to serve them when they 

 travelled, or laboured, in that hot climate. And we know 

 that grooms, and gentlemen of the turf, think large nostrils 

 necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and running horses. 

 Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to 

 have had some notion that stags have four spiracula — 

 " Terpadv/xoi, pives, triovpes CovocTjot, diavXai." 



** Quadrifidae nares, quadruplices ad respirationein canales." 



— Orp. Cyn. Lib. ii. 1. 181. 



Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say 

 that goats breathe at their ears; whereas he asserts just the 

 contrary: — "AXK/zatwv yap ovk aXrjOq Xeyci, cfyajxevo'S avairvetv 

 ra? atyas Kara ra tora." " Ale m aeon does not advance 

 what is true, when he avers that goats breathe through 

 their ears." — History of Animals. Book I., chap. xi. 



