XXI.
WHY DO TAME SOWS FARROW OFTEN, SOME AT, ONE TIME AND OTHERS
AT ANOTHER; AND THE WILD BUT ONCE A YEAR, AND ALL OF THEM
ABOUT THE SAME TIME AT THE BEGINNING OF SUMMER, WHENCE IT IS SAID,—
The wild sow farrowing, that night falls no rain?
Is it because of plentiful feeding, as in very truth fulness
doth produce wantonness? For abundance of nourishment breeds abundance of seed both in animals and plants.
Now wild sows live by their own toil, and that with fear;
the tame have always food enough, either by nature or
given them. Or may it not be ascribed to their rest and
exercise? For the tame do rest and go not far from their
keepers; the wild get to the mountains, and run about, by
which means they waste the nutriment, and consume it
upon the whole body. Therefore either through continual
converse, or abundance of seed, or because the females
feed in herds with the males, the tame sows call to mind
coition and stir up lust, as Empedocles talks of men.
But in wild sows, which feed apart, desire is cold and dull
for want of love and conversation. Or is it true, what
Aristotle says, that Homer called the wild boar
χλούνης, because he had but one stone? For most boars spoil their
stones (he says) by rubbing them against stumps of trees.
[p. 509]
