46 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
naturally strait 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 run- 
ning horses. 
Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have 
had some notion that stags have four spiracula : — 
" TeTpadv/jLot ' plves, nicrvpes nvoirjcn StafXot." 
" Quadrifidcie nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales." 
0pp. Cyn. Lib. ii. 1. 181. 
Nostrils sp)lit in four divisions, fourfold passages for breath- 
ing.") 
Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say that 
goats breathe at their ears ; whereas he asserts just the contrary : 
^ AXK/malcov yap ovk d\r]6r) Xeyet, (jbo/xei^o? avdirveiv rc'<; alya^; 
Kara ra MTa!' " Alcmseon does not advance what is true, when 
he avers that goats breathe through their ears." — History of 
Animals, Book i. ch. xi. 
Selborne, March 12, 1768. 
THE EGG OF THE QUAIL. 
