BOOK IX
I. WE have indicated the nature of the species that we have designated land animals, as living in some kind of association with men. Of the remaining kinds it is agreed that birds are the smallest. We will therefore first speak of the creatures of the seas, rivers and ponds.
There are however a considerable number of these that are larger even than land animals. The obvious cause of this is the lavish nature of liquid. Birds, which live hovering in the air, are in a different condition. But in the sea, lying so widely outspread and so yielding and productive of nutriment, because the element receives generative causes from above and is always producing offspring, a great many actual monstrosities are found, the seeds and first principles intertwining and interfolding with each other now in one way and now in another, now by the action of the wind and now by that of the waves, so ratifying the common opinion that everything born in any department of nature exists also in the sea, as well as a number of things never found elsewhere. Indeed we may realize that it contains likenesses of things and not of animals only, when we examine the grape, the sword-fish, the saw-fish, and the cucumber-fish, the last resembling a real cucumber both in colour and scent; which makes it less surprising that in cockle-shells that are so tiny there are horses' heads projecting.
II. But the largest number of animals and those of the largest size are in the Indian sea, among them whales covering three acres each, and sharks 100 ells long: in fact in those regions lobsters grow to 6 ft. long, and also eels in the river Ganges to 300 ft. The monsters in the sea are mostly to be seen about the solstices. At those periods in that part of the world there are rushing whirlwinds and rainstorms and tempests hurtling down from the mountain ridges that upturn the seas from their bottom, and roll with their waves monsters forced up from the depths in such a multitude, like the shoals of tunnies in other places, that the fleet of Alexander the Great deployed its column in line of battle to encounter them, in the same way as if an enemy force were meeting it: it was not possible to escape them in any other manner. They are not scared by shouts or noises or uproar, but only by impact, and they are only routed by a violent collision. There is an enormous peninsula in the Red Sea called Cadara, the projection of which forms a vast bay which took King Ptolemy twelve days and nights of rowing to cross, as it does not admit a breath of wind from any quarter. In this tranquil retreat particularly the creatures grow to a huge motionless bulk. The admirals of the fleets of Alexander the Great have stated that the Gedrosi who live by the river Arabis make the doorways in their houses out of the monsters' jaws and use their bones for roof-beams, many of them having been found that were 60 ft. long. Also great creatures resembling sheep come out on to the land in that country and after grazing on the roots of bushes return; and there are some with the heads of horses, asses and bulls that eat up the crops.
III. The largest animals in the Indian Ocean are the shark and the whale; the largest in the Bay of Biscay is the sperm-whale, which rears up like a vast pillar higher than a ship's rigging and belches out a sort of deluge; the largest in the Gulf of Cadiz is the tree-polypus, which spreads out such vast branches that it is believed never to have entered the Straits of Gibraltar because of this. The creatures called Wheels from their resemblance to a wheel also put in an appearance, these radiating in four spokes, with their nave terminating in two eyes, one on each side.