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

Chapter 367: CHAP. 92. (72.)—ANIMALS WHICH LIVE ON POISONS.

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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. 92. (72.)—ANIMALS WHICH LIVE ON POISONS.

Roe-bucks and quails 3129 grow fat on poisons, as we have already mentioned, being themselves the most harmless of animals. Serpents will feed on eggs, and the address displayed by the dragon is quite remarkable.—For it will either swallow the egg whole, if its jaws will allow of it, and roll over and over so as to break it within, and then by coughing eject the shells: or else, if it is too young to be able to do so, it will gradually encircle the egg with its coils, and hold it so tight as to break it at the end, just, in fact, as though a piece had been cut out with a knife; then holding the remaining part in its folds, it will suck the contents. In the same manner, too, when it has swallowed a bird whole, it will make a violent effort, and vomit the feathers.