The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 161: CHAP. 58.—BADGERS AND SQUIRRELS.

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

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.

CHAP. 58.—BADGERS AND SQUIRRELS.

The badger, when alarmed, shows its fear by a different kind of artifice; inflating the skin, it distends it to such a degree, as to repel equally the blows of men and the bite of dogs.1864 The squirrel, also, has the power of foreseeing storms, and so, stopping up its hole at the side from which the wind blows, it leaves the other side open; besides which, the tail, which is furnished with longer hair than the rest of the body, serves as a covering for it. It appears, therefore,1865 that some animals lay up a store of food for the winter, while others pass the time in sleep, which serves them instead of food.