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The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.
Great numbers of hyænas are produced in Africa, which also gives birth to multitudes of wild asses. In this species each male rules over a herd of females. Fearing rivals in their lust, they carefully watch the pregnant females, and castrate the young males with their teeth, as soon as they are born.1800 The pregnant females, on the other hand, seek concealment, and endeavour to bring forth in secret, being desirous to increase their opportunities of sexual indulgence.