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

Chapter 348: CHAP. 73. (52.)—THE GENERATION OF BIRDS: OTHER OVIPAROUS ANIMALS.

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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.

CHAP. 73. (52.)—THE GENERATION OF BIRDS: OTHER OVIPAROUS ANIMALS.

The generation of birds would appear to be very simple, while at the same time it has its own peculiar marvels. Indeed, there are quadrupeds as well that produce eggs, the chameleon, for instance, the lizard, and those of the serpent tribe of which we have previously spoken.3088 Of the feathered race, those which have hooked talons are comparatively unprolific; the cenchris 3089 being the only one among them that lays more than four eggs. Nature has so ordained it in the birds, that the timid ones should be more prolific than those which are courageous. The ostrich, the common fowl, and the partridge, are the only birds that lay eggs in considerable numbers. Birds have two modes of coupling, the female crouching on the ground, as in the barn-door fowl, or else standing, as is the case with the crane.