Plutarch's Natural Questions (21-25)

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.

BECAUSE the flesh of those parts of the body which concoct aliment the best is sweetest; and that concocts best which transpires most by motion and exercise. But the bear uses the fore-feet most in going and running, and in managing of things, as it were with hands.

WHETHER the dogs, as Empedocles says, with noses find the steps of all wild beasts, and draw in those effluvia which the beasts leave in the ground; but the various smells of plants and flowers lying over the footsteps do in spring-time obscure and confound them, and put the dogs to a loss at winding them? Therefore about Etna in Sicily no man keeps any hunting dogs, because abundance of wild marjoram flourishes and grows there the year round, and the perpetual flagrancy of the place destroys the scent of the wild beasts. There is also a tale, how Proserpine, as she was gathering flowers thereabout, was ravished by Pluto; therefore people, revering that place as an asylum, do not catch any creature that feeds thereabout.

WHETHER for the foresaid cause? For the full moons bring down the dews; and therefore Alcman calls dew the daughter of Jove and Luna in a verse of his,

Fed by the dew, bred by the Moon and Jove.

For dew is a weak and languid rain, and there is but little heat in the moon; which draws water from the earth, as the sun does; but because it cannot raise it on high, it soon lets it fall.

WHETHER is it because the wild beasts leave off going far abroad by reason of the cold, and so leave but few signs of themselves? Therefore some say, beasts spare the neighboring places, that they may not be sore put to it by going far abroad in winter, but may always have food ready at hand. Or is it because that for hunting the track alone is not sufficient, but there must be scent also? And things gently dissolved and loosened by heat afford a smell, but too violent cold binds up the scent, and will not let it reach the sense. Therefore they say that unguents and wine smell least in winter and cold weather; for the then concrete air keeps the scent in, and suffers it not to disperse.