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

Chapter 191: CHAP. 3. (4.)—THE LARGEST ANIMALS THAT ARE FOUND IN EACH OCEAN.

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. 3. (4.)—THE LARGEST ANIMALS THAT ARE FOUND IN EACH OCEAN.

The largest animals found in the Indian Sea are the pistrix and the balæna; while of the Gallic Ocean the physeter 2215 is the most bulky inhabitant, raising itself aloft like some vast column, and as it towers above the sails of ships, belching forth, as it were, a deluge of water. In the ocean of Gades there is a tree,2216 with outspread branches so vast, that it is supposed that it is for that reason it has never yet entered the Straits. There are fish also found there which are called sea-wheels,2217 in consequence of their singular conformation; they are divided by four spokes, the nave being guarded on every side by a couple of eyes.