48 
PLINY'S TS^ATUEA.L HISTOET, 
[Book XL 
women. In man the brain is destitute of blood and veins, and 
in other animals it has no fat. Those who are well informed 
on the subject, tell us that the brain is quite a different 
substance from the marrow, seeing that on being boiled it 
only becomes harder. In the very middle of the brain of 
every animal there are small bones found. Man is the only ani- 
mal in which it is known to palpitate^^ during infancy ; and 
it does not gain its proper consistency until after the child has 
made its first attempt to speak. The brain is the most ele- 
vated of all the viscera, and the nearest to the roof of the- 
head ; it is equally devoid of flesh, blood, and excretions. The 
senses hold this organ as their citadel; it is in this that 
are centred all the veins which spring from the heart ; it is 
here that they terminate ; this is the very culminating point of 
all, the regulator of the understanding. With all animals it 
is advanced to the fore-part of the head, from the fact that 
the senses have a tendency to the direction in which we look. 
Prom the brain proceeds sleep, and its return it is that causes 
the head to nod. Those creatures, in fact, which have no brain, 
never sleep. It is said that stags^^ have in the head certain 
small maggots, twenty in number : they are situate in the 
empty space that lies beneath the tongue, and around the joints 
by which the head is united to the body. 
CKAP. 50. — THE EAHS. AI7IMALS WHICH HEAK WITHOUT EAES 
OE APEETTJllES. 
Man is the only animal the ears of which are immoveable. 
It is from the natural fiaccidity of the ear, that the surname 
of Flaccus is derived. There is no part of the body that 
creates a more enormous expense for our women, in the 
pearls which are suspended from them. In the East, too, it 
is thought highly becoming for the men, even, to wear gold 
rings in their ears. Some animals have large, and others 
small ears. The stag alone has them cut and divided, as it 
were ; in the field-mouse they have a velvet surface. All the 
animals that are viviparous have ears of some kind or other, 
with the sole exception of the sea-calf, the dolphin, the fishes 
85 See B. vii. c. 1. 
8s Cuvier says that these are the larvae of the oestrus, which are deposited 
on the lips of quadrupeds, and so make their way to yarious cavi'ties. 
